Read TXT file with variable separation

Raphael,

This looks like fixed width format which you can read with read.fwf.

In fixed width format the columns are not separated by white space (or other
characters), but are identified by the positition in the file. So in your
file, for example the first field looks to contained in the first 2 columns
of your file (the first 2 characters of every line), the second field in the
next five columns, etc.

Regards,
Jan


Citeren Raphael Saldanha <saldanha.plangeo at gmail.com>:

Hi!

I have to import some TXT files into R, but the separation between the
columns are made with different blank spaces, but each file use the
same separation. Example:

31 ?104 5 0 ? 11RUA ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? SAO
SEBASTIAO ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 25



?BAIRRO FILETO
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?01
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?00200338540000

The pattern is the same on each file.

There is two sample files attached to this message.

I would like to figure out how to import a single file, and the use
some code to import several files (like this
http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/r/code/read_multiple.htm)

When I try read.table, I receive this:

cnefe <- read.table("sample1.txt", header=FALSE)
Erro em scan(file, what, nmax, sep, dec, quote, skip, nlines, na.strings,
?:
?linha 1 n?o tinha 17 elementos


Information about my session:

sessionInfo()R version 2.12.1 (2010-12-16)Platform: i386-pc-mingw32/i386
(32-bit)

locale:[1] LC_COLLATE=Portuguese_Brazil.1252
LC_CTYPE=Portuguese_Brazil.1252 ??[3]
LC_MONETARY=Portuguese_Brazil.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=Portuguese_Brazil.1252
attached base packages:[1] stats ? ? graphics ?grDevices utils
datasets ?methods ? base

--
Atenciosamente,

Raphael Saldanha
saldanha.plangeo at gmail.com