[R] Setting the Number of Columns

[Jonathan Baron]

On 05/29/02 15:19, Matt Borkowski wrote:
>I am trying to read in a data set with 17 columns into a data frame.  The 
>problem is, there are some lines in the data that occasionally pop up with 
>less than 17 numbers in a row.  I was trying to use the command
>
>data <- read.table("dataset.dat", fill=TRUE, quote = "")
>
>There was no problem running this with an older version of R and the data 
>was forced into a data frame with 17 columns with the missing data filled in 
>as NA.  But after updating to the newest version something changed and now 
>the data is being forced into a data frame with only 14 columns.

I had this problem once.  I solved it by moving one of the long
lines of data to the beginning of the file, so it was the first
record.  Apparently R decided to get the number of columns from
the first record.  I just tried this with R 1.5.0 and it still
works.  If necessary you can make up a dummy line and delete it.

-- 
Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron
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