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header line generated write.table
2 messages · Y C Tao, Marc Schwartz
On Wed, 2004-08-18 at 16:42, Y C Tao wrote:
I want to write following data frame into a CSV file:
Col1 Col2 Col3
Row1 1 1 1
Row2 2 2 2
where Row1, Row2 are the row names and Col1, Col2, Col3 are the column
names.
The correct CSV file should be:
,"Col1","Col2","Col3"
Row1,1,1,1
Row2,2,2,2
However, the one generated by R using write.table(x, file="xyz.csv",
sep=",") has a header line that reads:
"Col1","Col2","Col3"
without the comma at the very beginning.
As a result, if you open the file in Excel, the column names are not
correct (shifted to the left by one column).
Is there a way to get around this?
Thanks!
The solution is on the help page for ?write.table: Details Normally there is no column name for a column of row names. If col.names=NA a blank column name is added. This can be used to write CSV files for input to spreadsheets. Also, the first example on that page gives you: ## To write a CSV file for input to Excel one might use write.table(x, file = "foo.csv", sep = ",", col.names = NA) Thus:
write.table(x, col.names = NA, sep = ",")
"","Col1","Col2","Col3" "Row1",1,1,1 "Row2",2,2,2 HTH, Marc Schwartz