[R] RODBC for importing dbf

[ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk]

On Fri, 10 May 2002, juli g. pausas wrote:

> Hi
> I know that it is very easy to import data from a dbf file to R, by
> saving the data as csv, for instance.
> However, I have several hundreds of files to do that. So, I thought of
> using RODBC to read the dbf files and save it as data.frame. However, I
> cannot even start (this is my first time using such package):
>
> > library(RODBC)
> > bdades <- odbcConnect("prova.DBF")
> Warning message:
> ODBC connection failed in: odbcConnect("prova.DBF")
> > dir(pattern="pr")
> [1] "prova.DBF"
>
> My idea was to use sqlFetch(bdades) to create an R data.frame.
> I'm using R on Windows. I can open the file prova.DBF with Excel without
> any problem.
> What I'm doing wrong? Any comment or suggestion will be welcome.

[Not reading the documentation, not even the help page for odbcConnect.]

ODBC does not open files.  It connects to databases as specified by DSNs.
The first argument of odbcConnect is `dsn', documented as

     dsn: character. A registered data source name.

See the R Data Import/Export Manual and your Windows documentation for how
to configure ODBC sources in the ODBC Control Panel Applet.  Hopefully you
will have one or more ODBC drivers for `dbf files'.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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