Thanks for the suggestion. I had read "fill" but didn't pick up on the details. It only uses the first five columns to determine column dimensions, so it ignored my last two columns. Specifying "col.names" with fill=TRUE did the trick!
Aloha, Tim ----- Original Message ---- From: Uwe Ligges <lig...@statistik.tu-dortmund.de> To: Tim Clark <mudiver1...@yahoo.com> Cc: r-help@r-project.org Sent: Sun, July 18, 2010 6:03:47 AM Subject: Re: [R] Reading files with varying number of columns See argument "fill" in ?read.table Uwe Ligges On 18.07.2010 12:14, Tim Clark wrote: > Dear R list, > I am trying to read files with a varying number of columns and can't figure out > how to get them in the proper format. Some rows have five value and some have > seven. Is there a way to read them in so that two empty columns are added to > every row that has only five values? An example of the data follows. Thanks! > Tim > >> 46,B,00301,2004-02-03,11:59:16 >> 46,B,00301,2004-02-03,12:03:43 >> 46,B,00301,2004-02-03,12:39:17 >> 46,B,00301,2004-02-03,23:07:28 >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,07:39:57,-1.5,meters >> 44,A,00230,2004-02-04,07:44:59 >> 44,A,00230,2004-02-04,07:46:19 >> 44,A,00230,2004-02-04,07:48:24 >> 44,A,00230,2004-02-04,07:49:12 >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,07:53:08,2.5,meters >> 44,A,00230,2004-02-04,07:54:34 >> 44,A,00230,2004-02-04,07:55:08 >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,07:56:18,2.9,meters >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,07:56:39,2.5,meters >> 46,B,00301,2004-02-04,08:00:49 >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,08:02:12,-1.1,meters >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,08:04:01,2.2,meters >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,08:04:26,3.3,meters >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,08:40:26,2.9,meters >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,08:41:04,-2.2,meters >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,08:42:44,2.2,meters >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,08:44:31,2.9,meters >> 44,A,00231,2004-02-04,09:04:43 >> 44,A,00231,2004-02-04,09:10:30 >> 44,A,00231,2004-02-04,09:12:08 >> 44,A,00231,2004-02-04,09:13:32 >> 44,A,00231,2004-02-04,09:14:06 >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,09:18:24,0.4,meters >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,09:20:13,2.5,meters >> 44,A,00231,2004-02-04,09:21:04 >> 44,A,00231,2004-02-04,09:22:53 >> 44,A,00231,2004-02-04,09:25:32 >> 44,A,00231,2004-02-04,09:29:31 >> 44,A,00231,2004-02-04,09:30:05 >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,09:53:25,2.5,meters >> 43,C,00232,2004-02-04,09:53:53,1.5,meters >> 46,B,00301,2004-02-04,22:16:24 >> 46,B,00301,2004-02-04,22:19:32 >> 46,B,00258,2004-02-04,23:44:01 >> 46,B,00258,2004-02-04,23:44:28 > > > Tim Clark > > Marine Ecologist > National Park of American Samoa > Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799 > > > > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org 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. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org 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.
