Hello Soumyadeep, if you store the data in a tabular file, then I suggest using standard text-editing tools like cut (say your file is called data.csv, fields are separated with commas and you want to get rid of the third and sixth column):
$ cut --complement --delimiter="," --fields=3,6 < data.csv > data_cut.csv If you're not in an Unix environment but have perl, then you may use a script like: open SRC, "data.csv" or die("couldn't open source"); open DST, ">data_cut.csv" or die("couldn't open destination"); while (<SRC>) { chomp; @fields = split /,/; #substitute the comma for the delimiter you use splice @fields, 2, 1; #get rid of third column (they're zero-based, thus 2 instead of 3) splice @fields, 5, 1; #get rid of sixth column print DST join(",", @fields), "\n"; } If you need to do the selection within R, then you can do it by indexing the data structure. Suppose you have the data in a data.frame called data. Then: > data <- data[,-6] > data <- data[,-3] might do the trick (but since I'm not much of an R hacker, this is without guarantee). I think it might be better however to do the preprocessing before the data get into R because then you avoid loading the columns to discard into memory. Hope this helps ~ Oldrich On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 7:55 AM, Soumyadeep nandi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thanks Oldrich, > Actually I was not sure if I can remove these columns and build model. > Thanks a lot for your kind suggestion. Could you tell me if there any > function to remove these columns from the data matrix. > > With best regards, > Soumyadeep > > > Oldrich Kruza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > A rather technical workaround I see could be adding a row with a > different value. But if a column only ever has one value, then it > contributes nothing to the model and I see no reason why it would have > to be kept. > ~ Oldrich Kruza > > On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 6:45 AM, Soumyadeep nandi > wrote: > > What should I do if I need to train svm() with data having same value > across > > all rows in some columns. These must be the important features of the > class > > and we cant exclude these columns to build up models. > > > > The error I am getting is: > > Error in predict.svm(ret, xhold) : Model is empty! > > In addition: Warning message: > > In svm.default(datatrain, classtrain) : > > Variable(s) 'F112' and 'F113'.... [... truncated] > > > > Is there any way to overcome this problem? Any suggestions would be highly > > helpful. > > > > Regards > > Soumyadeep > > > > > > ________________________________ > > Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it > > now. > > > > ________________________________ > Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. ______________________________________________ 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.