[R] read.csv issue

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Set allowEscapes = FALSE when reading. See the help page for more details.

There is perhaps an argument for changing the default for allowEscapes 
under read.csv, especially as people have now changed that for 
comment.char (in R-devel).

On Wed, 16 Aug 2006, Doran, Harold wrote:

> I'm trying to read in some data from a .csv format and have come across
> the following issue. Here is a simple example for replication
> 
> # A sample .csv format
> schid,sch_name
> 331-802-7081,School One
> 464-551-7357,School Two
> 388-517-7627,School Three \& Four
> 388-517-4394,School Five
> 
> Note the third line includes the \ character. However, when I read the
> data in I get
> 
> > read.csv(file.choose())
>          schid              sch_name
> 1 331-802-7081            School One
> 2 464-551-7357            School Two
> 3 388-517-7627 School Three & Four
> 4 388-517-4394           School Five
> 
> It turns out to be very important to read in this character as I have a
> program that loops through a data set and Sweave's about 30,000 files.
> The variable sch_name gets dropped into the tex file using
> \Sexpr{tmp$sch_name}. However, if there is an &, the latex file won't
> compile properly. So, what I need is for the data to be read in as
> 
>          schid              sch_name
> 1 331-802-7081            School One
> 2 464-551-7357            School Two
> 3 388-517-7627 School Three \& Four
> 4 388-517-4394           School Five
> 
> I am obligated by a client to include the & in the school name, so
> eliminating that isn't an option. I thought maybe comment.char or quote
> would be what I needed, but they didn't resolve the issue. I'm certain
> I'm missing something simple, I just can't see it.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Harold
> 
> 
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 

-- 
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 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595