Help with writing data to csv

Sat, May 12, 2012 3:33 PM

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
On Behalf Of DL
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2012 1:33 PM
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: [R] Help with writing data to csv

I am trying to write data to csv but I am having issues with the
separations.

Basically I have some results that I get with R that I copied and pasted
into word and then saved as .txt

I want to write the results to csv because it's easier to make tables in
word (all I would have to do is copy and paste into a table, instead of
typing everything out).

I am able to write the data to the .csv file but the data is not
comma-delimited when I open the file. Everything is written into the first
cell.

These are the various commands that I have been inputting:

write.csv(practice, file.choose(new=T), quote=F, row.names=F)

write.csv(practice, file.choose(new=T), sep=",", quote=F, row.names=F)
Warning message:
In write.csv(practice, file.choose(new = T), sep = ",", quote = F,  :
  attempt to set 'sep' ignored

write.table(practice, file =
"C:/Users/User/Documents/Documents/Proyectodeafroantillanos/Laterals/pract
ice.csv",
sep="\t", quote=F, row.names=F)

 write.csv(practice, file =
"C:/Users/User/Documents/Documents/Proyectodeafroantillanos/Laterals/pract
ice.csv")

write.csv(practice, file =

"C:/Users/User/Documents/Documents/Proyectodeafroantillanos/Laterals/pract
ice.csv",

row.names=FALSE)

write.csv(practice, file =
"C:/Users/User/Documents/Documents/Proyectodeafroantillanos/Laterals/pract
ice.csv",
sep = "\t", row.names=FALSE)
Warning message:
In write.csv(practice, file =
"C:/Users/User/Documents/Documents/Proyectodeafroantillanos/Laterals/pract
ice.csv",
:
  attempt to set 'sep' ignored


As you can see, the commands in which I write to csv and set "sep" I get a
message saying that attempt to set "sep" ignored. All the other commands
work but I don't get a comma-delimited nor a tab-delimited file.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thank you.

Well, the function write.csv() is a wrapper for write.table() and it means just what it says, write CSV (i.e. Comma Separated Value), so you can't change the separator.  If you want to use a tab separator, then you need to use write.table() directly.  

That being said, what was the result of the output of the very first command that you said you used?

write.csv(practice, file.choose(new=T), quote=F, row.names=F)

I used the built-in data frame, cars, instead of your file practice and it worked just fine in producing a comma separated value file.

Dan

Daniel Nordlund
Bothell, WA USA

Help with writing data to csv

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