Colleagues, I am trying to read a file that contains the ? (mu character). readLines is succcessful and shows the following: "\xb5g/mL\" read.csv yields the following:
Error in type.convert(data[[i]], as.is = as.is[i], dec = dec, na.strings = character(0)) : invalid multibyte string at '<b5>g/mL'
using a text editor, i replaced all occurrences of ? (mu) - at which point read.csv worked properly. sessionInfo()
R version 2.8.0 (2008-10-20) i386-apple-darwin8.11.1 locale: en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8 attached base packages: [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
Although my work-around was successful, I am wondering whether there is some means to accomplish this without editing the source document: 1. is it possible to inform R to read the character in its natural form? 2. if not, I could execute readLines, then do a gsub (which did not work - any ideas of how to formulate the regular expression would be appreciated). then write to a tempfile and read in again (or use a textConnection). Dennis Dennis Fisher MD P < (The "P Less Than" Company) Phone: 1-866-PLessThan (1-866-753-7784) Fax: 1-415-564-2220 www.PLessThan.com