On Aug 17, 2011, at 05:57 , Jim Holtman wrote:
just read in the file using the tab as the separator. if this is a problem because a tab might appear by itself, then use readLines to read in the file, gsub to replace the blank/tab with a new separator, writeLines to write out to a temporary and then read in from the temporary file.
You can skip the write and read back step by reading from a text connection. In R 2.14-to-be, there's a text= argument to read.table (and scan too), so you'll be able to do the whole thing on the fly:
read.table(.... text=gsub(readLines(.....)....))
Sent from my iPad
On Aug 16, 2011, at 11:02, Matt Curcio <matt.curcio.ri at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
I have a list that I got from a web page that I would like to crunch.
Unfortunately, the list has some unusual separators in it. I believe
the columns are separated by 1 space and 1 tab. I tried to insert
this into the read.table( ..., sep=" \t", ...) but got an error that
said something like 'only one byte separators can be used.
I have thought about using a gsub to 'swap out' the "space + tab" and
replace it with commas, etc but thought there might be another way.
Any suggestions?
M
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Matt Curcio
M: 401-316-5358
E: matt.curcio.ri at gmail.com