count.fields vs read.table

Dear R-help,

I am using R 2.1.1 on Windows XP.

I have a tab-delimited data file that has been exported by SAS. The file is reasonably big so I 
apologise that I can't give a good toy example. I do this:
      table(count.fields("t1.txt", sep="\t", quote="\""))
      248 
      809 
So I have 809 lines, each with 248 fields.

There's something wrong with me, my data or both, since when I try to read the data, I get this:
      dim(read.table("t1.txt", sep="\t", quote="\"", header=TRUE)
      [1] 425 248

I wonder if someone could be kind enough to point out what I've done wrong or suggest some tips 
for managing this, please? Thanks for your advice!

"Andrew C. Ward" <acward at tpg.com.au> writes:

Dear R-help,

I am using R 2.1.1 on Windows XP.

I have a tab-delimited data file that has been exported by SAS. The file is reasonably big so I
apologise that I can't give a good toy example. I do this:
      table(count.fields("t1.txt", sep="\t", quote="\""))
      248
      809
So I have 809 lines, each with 248 fields.

There's something wrong with me, my data or both, since when I try to read the data, I get this:
      dim(read.table("t1.txt", sep="\t", quote="\"", header=TRUE)
      [1] 425 248

I wonder if someone could be kind enough to point out what I've done wrong or suggest some tips
for managing this, please? Thanks for your advice!

Something around line 425 that causes the rest of the file to be
gobbled? Quotes and comment characters could be the culprit, although
the inconsistency with count.fields looks suspicious. Otherwise, I'd
look at the data read and try to pinpoint the line where things go
weird (e.g. the last handful of entries of the first column).