Importing multiple text files with lapply.

It sounds like you want to use 'readLines' and not 'read.table'
x <- readLines(textConnection("January 11, 2009
+ January 11, 2009
+ October 19, 2008
+ October 13, 2008
+ August 16, 2008
+ June 19, 2008
+ April 19, 2008
+ April 16, 2008
+ February 9, 2008
+ September 2, 2007"))
closeAllConnections()
x
[1] "January 11, 2009"  "January 11, 2009"  "October 19, 2008"
"October 13, 2008"  "August 16, 2008"
 [6] "June 19, 2008"     "April 19, 2008"    "April 16, 2008"
"February 9, 2008"  "September 2, 2007"

What exactly are you going to do with the data after you read it in?
Dear jim,
Yes, it's true, the data are separated onto new lines as follows:
January 11, 2009
January 11, 2009
October 19, 2008
October 13, 2008
August 16, 2008
June 19, 2008
April 19, 2008
April 16, 2008
February 9, 2008
September 2, 2007

I tried your attempt and it didn't work either; it returned the error message:
Error in FUN(X[[1L]], ...) :
?'file' must be a character string or connection

On 2011-01-17, at 2:02 PM, jim holtman wrote:

try:

mylist <- lapply(a, read.table, header = TRUE, sep = '\n')

also is the separator really '\n' meaning a new-line? ?What exactly
does the data look like?

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 11:47 AM, Simon Kiss <simonjkiss at yahoo.ca> wrote:
Hello,
I'm trying to read in 50 text filess with dates as content to create a list of tables.

a is the list of filenames that need to be read in.

The following command returns the following error
mylist<-lapply(a, read.table(header=TRUE, sep="\n"))

Error in read.table(header = TRUE, sep = "\n") :
?element 1 is empty;
? the part of the args list of 'is.character' being evaluated was:
? (file)

Does anyone have any suggestions?
Yours, Simon Kiss
*********************************
Simon J. Kiss, PhD
Assistant Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University
73 George Street
Brantford, Ontario, Canada
N3T 2C9
Cell: +1 519 761 7606

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--
Jim Holtman
Data Munger Guru

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
*********************************
Simon J. Kiss, PhD
Assistant Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University
73 George Street
Brantford, Ontario, Canada
N3T 2C9
Cell: +1 519 761 7606

Jim Holtman
Data Munger Guru

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?

Importing multiple text files with lapply.

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