write.table only writes the first 256 variables/columns

Excel only imports the first 256 columns as standard (not sure if you 
can increase this).  I had a similar problem importing a database 
recently - I just gave up using Excel, used R instead.

Giles

On 2003.05.23 15:43 Stuart Leask wrote:

Thanks. I was "believing" an Excel import of the file - as you say, a
re-import
into R still has 333 columns. I shall look elsewhere for the cause of
the
mysterious truncation.

Stuart

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Lumley" <tlumley at u.washington.edu>
To: "Stuart Leask" <stuart.leask at nottingham.ac.uk>
Cc: "R-Help" <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 2:50 PM
Subject: Re: [R] write.table only writes the first 256

variables/columns

On Fri, 23 May 2003, Stuart Leask wrote:

Hi there.
Using read.spss I can read in a file 333 columns, 280 lines, but

if I

use

write.table to export it, I only get 256 columns x 280 lines. I

can't

find

this feature documented anywhere...

I can't replicate this:

foo<-matrix(rnorm(333*280), ncol=333, nrow=280)
foo<-as.data.frame(foo)
write.table(foo,"foo.txt")
bar<-read.table("foo.txt",header=TRUE)
dim(bar)

[1] 280 333

all.equal(foo,bar)

[1] TRUE

and I can't see why it would be true. Does this example work for

you?

 The largest SPSS file I have lying around has only 212 columns,

so I

can't test the read.spss aspect of it.

-thomas