What about trimming the file list based on a minimum size? You can also use the arguments to list.files to get only certain patterns in file names, and otherwise you can put a condition in the function passed to lapply to return NULL, which will rbind ok, or process x in a similar way.
a <- a[file.info(a)$size > 1] On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 2:47 PM, Paul <p.frank...@niwa.co.nz> wrote: > > Hi All, > > I have a problem with reading in multiple text files where some of the files > have no data and was hoping someone may be able to help me find a solution. > > Each text file is a daily log of fish movement. However, on some occasions > no movements will be recorded on a particular day and therefore the text > file for that day is empty. > > I'm currently using the following code to read the files: > > a<-list.files() > x<-lapply(a,function(x){read.table(x,colClasses='character')}) #the > colClasses is to ensure zeros at the beginning of tag numbers are included > myData<-do.call(rbind, x) > > This works fine as long as all the files being read have data in them, but > if one of the empty log files is included it returns the following error: > > Error in read.table(x, colClasses = "character", blank.lines.skip = TRUE) : > no lines available in input > > Does anyone know of a way that I can overcome this (maybe skip empty files > somehow?) without having to manually trawl through the hundreds of files I > have to remove the empty ones? > > Thanks in advance, > Paul > > -- > View this message in context: > http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Reading-multiple-text-files-where-some-files-are-empty-tp2401035p2401035.html > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > ______________________________________________ > 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. > -- Michael Sumner Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania Hobart, Australia e-mail: mdsum...@gmail.com ______________________________________________ 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.