Hi Arun, thank-you for your suggestion. I made a mistake previously when I suggested that there was a "prefix" in front of "00060_00003" possibly suggesting that it was a string of characters rather than numbers. The "prefix" in front of "00060_00003" is actually two numbers, see the examples below:
01_00060_00003 01_00060_00003_cd 15_00060_00003 15_00060_00003_cd 02_00060_00003 02_00060_00003_cd How can the following code be modified to reflect the numerical rather than character prefix? dat1[,c("datetime",colnames(dat1)[grep("00060_00003",colnames(dat1))])] Thank-you. Irucka Embry <-----Original Message-----> >From: arun [smartpink...@yahoo.com] >Sent: 1/9/2013 7:13:05 AM >To: iruc...@mail2world.com >Cc: r-help@r-project.org >Subject: Re: [R] select partial name and full name columns > > > >Hi, > >May be this is creating the problem: > >set.seed(15) >dat1<-data.frame(A_00060_00003=sample(1:10,5,replace=TRUE),B_00060_0000 3_cd=sample(20:30,5,replace=TRUE),C_00060_00003=sample(1:15,5,replace=TR UE),D_00060=sample(1:8,5,replace=TRUE),datetime=as.POSIXct(paste(rep("6/ 3/2011",5),c("0:00","0:30","0:35","0:40","0:45")),format="%m/%d/%Y >%H:%M")) > dat1[,c("datetime",grep("00060_00003",colnames(dat1)))] >#Error in `[.data.frame`(dat1, , c("datetime", grep("00060_00003", >colnames(dat1)))) : > #undefined columns selected >dat1[,c("datetime",colnames(dat1)[grep("00060_00003",colnames(dat1))])] ># datetime A_00060_00003 B_00060_00003_cd C_00060_00003 >#1 2011-06-03 00:00:00 7 30 2 >#2 2011-06-03 00:30:00 2 28 10 >#3 2011-06-03 00:35:00 10 22 8 >#4 2011-06-03 00:40:00 7 27 11 >#5 2011-06-03 00:45:00 4 29 13 >A.K. > > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: Irucka Embry <iruc...@mail2world.com> >To: r-help@r-project.org >Cc: >Sent: Wednesday, January 9, 2013 5:44 AM >Subject: [R] select partial name and full name columns > >Hi, I have the following function: > >getDataFromDVFileCustom <- function (file, hasHeader = TRUE, separator = >"\t") >{ >DVdatatmp <- as.matrix(read.table(file, sep = "\t", fill = TRUE, >comment.char = "#", as.is = TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE, na.strings = >"NA")) >DVdatatmper <- as.matrix(DVdatatmp[ , c("datetime", >grep("^_00060_00003", colnames(DVdatatmp)))]) >retval <- as.data.frame(DVdatatmper, colClasses = c("character"), fill = >TRUE, comment.char = "#", stringsAsFactors = FALSE) >if (ncol(retval) == 2) { >names(retval) <- c("dateTime", "value") >} >else if (ncol(retval) == 3) { >names(retval) <- c("dateTime", "value", "code") >} >if (dateFormatCheck(retval$dateTime)) { >retval$dateTime <- as.Date(retval$dateTime) >} >else { >retval$dateTime <- as.Date(retval$dateTime, format = "%m/%d/%Y") >} >retval$value <- as.numeric(retval$value) >return(retval) >} > >The function gives me this error: >getDataFromDVFileCustom(file) >Error in as.matrix(DVdatatmp[, c("datetime", grep("^_00060_00003", >colnames(DVdatatmp)))]) : >subscript out of bounds > >I am trying to only select 3 columns (datetime and then two partial name >columns that end in 00060_00003 and 00060_00003_cd. Each file that I >will be reading into the function has a different number of columns and >a different prefix in front of 00060_00003 and 00060_00003_cd. I have >searched online and tried those possible solutions, but they did not >work for my function and data. > >What is the best way to select those 3 columns only? > >Thank-you. > >Irucka Embry > > >______________________________________________ >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. <span id=m2wTl><p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2" style="font-size:13.5px">_______________________________________________________________<BR>Get the Free email that has everyone talking at <a href=http://www.mail2world.com target=new>http://www.mail2world.com</a><br> <font color=#999999>Unlimited Email Storage – POP3 – Calendar – SMS – Translator – Much More!</font></font></span> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ 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.