problem with read.table

Any ideas why read.table complains about not correct number of elements in 
line
while readLine/strsplit indicate that all lines have the same number of 
elements ?

R
tbl <- read.table('tmp', header = T, sep = '\t')
Error in scan(file = file, what = what, sep = sep, quote = quote, dec = 
dec,  : 
        line 32 did not have 27 elements
lines <- readLines('tmp')
v <- 1:length(lines)
i <- 0; for (line in lines) { i <- i + 1; v[i] <- length(strsplit(line, 
'\t')[[1]]) }
v
[1] 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 
27 27
[26] 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 
27 27
[51] 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27
sum((v - v[1])^2)
[1] 0
length(strsplit(lines[32], '\t')[[1]])
[1] 27
ryszard.czerminski at pharma.novartis.com writes:
Any ideas why read.table complains about not correct number of elements in 
line
while readLine/strsplit indicate that all lines have the same number of 
elements ?

R

tbl <- read.table('tmp', header = T, sep = '\t')
Error in scan(file = file, what = what, sep = sep, quote = quote, dec = 
dec,  : 
        line 32 did not have 27 elements
lines <- readLines('tmp')
v <- 1:length(lines)
i <- 0; for (line in lines) { i <- i + 1; v[i] <- length(strsplit(line, 
'\t')[[1]]) }
v
 [1] 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 
27 27
[26] 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 
27 27
[51] 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27
sum((v - v[1])^2)
[1] 0
length(strsplit(lines[32], '\t')[[1]])
[1] 27
Try count.fields to see what line is giving problems.  Watch
especially for comment characters (default is '#') and quote
characters.  My good friends in Biological Sciences (including my
spouse and one of my children) have a habit of incorporating 3' and 5'
in descriptive text and that always trips me up.

Any ideas why read.table complains about not correct number of elements in 
line
while readLine/strsplit indicate that all lines have the same number of 
elements ?
That is what count.fields is for.  Setting fill=TRUE in read.table can 
help detection, too.

One guess is that you have a comment character on that line, but one 
thing you did not show us is the appropriate lines of the file.
tbl <- read.table('tmp', header = T, sep = '\t')
Error in scan(file = file, what = what, sep = sep, quote = quote, dec = 
dec,  : 
        line 32 did not have 27 elements
lines <- readLines('tmp')
v <- 1:length(lines)
i <- 0; for (line in lines) { i <- i + 1; v[i] <- length(strsplit(line, 
'\t')[[1]]) }
v
 [1] 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 
27 27
[26] 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 
27 27
[51] 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27 27
sum((v - v[1])^2)
[1] 0
length(strsplit(lines[32], '\t')[[1]])
[1] 27

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