Can I use a variable to pass a file name to scan() ?
What operating system and which version of R?
I got a similar error message under R 2.0.1 under Windows 2000:
> y <- scan(file = x[1])
Error in scan(file = x[1]) : "scan" expected a real, got "?????"
Part of the function definition for "scan" is 'scan(file = "",
what = double(0), ...'. This means that by default, "scan" was
expecting double precision numbers. When it found an unrecognizable
binary, it complained. Using 'what="raw"' produced something:
> y <- scan(file = x[1], what="raw")
Read 1 items
The file x[1] was an MS Word *.wbk file, and scan was only able to
read a portion of the header using "raw".
Have you considered "try"?
> y <- try(scan(file=x[1]))
Error in scan(file = x[1]) : "scan" expected a real, got "?????"
> y
[1] "Error in scan(file = x[1]) : \"scan\" expected a real, got
\"??\021??\261\"\n"
attr(,"class")
[1] "try-error"
What are you trying to do? The following worked for me just now?
> write(pi, "pi.txt")
> scan('pi.txt')
Read 1 items
[1] 3.141593
> all.equal(scan('pi.txt'), pi)
Read 1 items
[1] "Mean relative difference: 1.102658e-07"
hope this helps. spencer graves
Andrew Peterson wrote:
Hi, can anyone please tell me if it is possible to use a variable to pass a file name to scan()? I am trying to write a program that loops through a series of text files. I use list.files() to create a character vector of file names. Then I would like to take one string at a time from the character vector and use that string to specify the name of the text file I want to open using scan(). I have used constructs such as x <- list.files() y <- scan(file = x[1]) but I always get the following error message: Error in scan(file = x[1]) : "scan" expected a real, got "<CLOSE>" I've read all the documentation at least a couple of times and have searched this list to no avail. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Andrew.
______________________________________________ R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html