[R] dealing with a messy dataset

[Boris Steipe]

Is this a fixed width format?
If so, read.fwf() in base, or read_fwf() in the readr package will solve the problem. You may need to trim trailing spaces though.


B.




> On Oct 5, 2017, at 10:12 AM, jean-philippe <jeanphilippe.fontaine at gssi.infn.it> wrote:
> 
> dear R-users,
> 
> 
> I am facing a quite regular and basic problem when it comes to dealing with datasets, but I cannot find any satisfying answer so far.
> I have a messy dataset of galaxies like that :
> 
> And XVIII          000214.5+450520  0.69 17   9 0.00  -8.7 26.8 6.44  6.78 < 6.65  -44  0.5 MESSIER031               0.6  1.54
> PAndAS-03          000356.4+405319  0.10 17     0.00  -3.6 27.8 4.38                    2.8 MESSIER031               2.8  1.75
> PAndAS-04          000442.9+472142  0.05 22     0.00  -6.6 23.1 5.59              -108  2.5 MESSIER031               2.5  1.75
> PAndAS-05          000524.1+435535  0.06 31     0.00  -4.5 25.6 4.75               103  2.8 MESSIER031               2.8  1.75
> ESO409-015         000531.8-280553  3.00 78  23 0.00 -14.6 24.1 8.10  8.25   8.10  769 -2.0 NGC0024                 -1.5 -2.05
> AGC748778          000634.4+153039  0.61 70   3 0.00 -10.4 24.9 6.39  5.70   6.64  486 -1.9 NGC0253                 -1.5 -2.72
> And XX             000730.7+350756  0.20 33   5 0.00  -5.8 27.1 5.26  5.70        -182  2.4 MESSIER031               2.4  1.75
> 
> What I would like to do is to read this dataset, but I would like that the space between And and XVIII is not interpreted as 2 different columns but as the name of the galaxy in one column.
> How is it possible to do so?
> 
> For instance I did this data1<-read.table("lvg_table2.txt",skip=70,fill=T) where I used fill=T because the rows don't have the same number of features since R splits the name of the galaxies into 2 columns because of the space.
> 
> 
> Best Regards, thanks in advance
> 
> 
> Jean-Philippe Fontaine
> 
> -- 
> Jean-Philippe Fontaine
> PhD Student in Astroparticle Physics,
> Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI),
> Viale Francesco Crispi 7,
> 67100 L'Aquila, Italy
> Mobile: +393487128593, +33615653774
> 
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