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different between read.table and read.delim

4 messages · Sarah Goslee, Jinsong Zhao, David Winsemius

Original
Jinsong Zhao
# 
Hi there,

I have a data set file, called "ecotox.rep", which is a delimited file 
separated with "|".

When I tried to read the file with the following command,

 > df <- read.table("ecotox.rep", sep = "|", header = TRUE, 
stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

I got the error messages:

Error in scan(file = file, what = what, sep = sep, quote = quote, dec = 
dec,  :
   line 113 did not have 87 elements

However, when I read the file with the following command,

 > df <- read.delim("ecotox.rep", sep = "|", header = TRUE, 
stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

I got a correct output.

If I understand correctly, read.delim() is just wrapped from 
read.table(), why read.delim() works, but read.table() doesn't.

Thanks in advance.

Best,
Jinsong
Sarah Goslee
# 
Look at the default arguments to each, especially the quote argument.

Sarah
On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 10:24 PM, Jinsong Zhao <jszhao at yeah.net> wrote:
Jinsong Zhao
#
On 2016/12/23 11:31, Sarah Goslee wrote:
Thank you very much!

The quote and fill argument are not same for the two function. only 
change quote or fill can not make read.table() work.

Best,
Jinsong
David Winsemius
# 
In the future you can examine the consequence kid various choices for parameters with something along the lines of 

table( count.fields( file= .. ,  ... <parameters>))

Sent from my iPhone