On Jan 25, 2013, at 1:37 PM, Tim Howard wrote:
> David,
> Thank you again for the reply. I'll try to make readLines() and strplit()
> work. What bugs me is that I think it would import fine if the folks who
> created the csv had used double quotes "" rather than an escaped quote \" for
> those pesky internal quotes. Since that's the case, I'd think there would be
> a solution within read.csv() ... or perhaps scan()?, I just can't figure it
> out.
Can you pre-process with an editor? Replace all the ", " hits with something
like '|'.
--
David.
> best,
> Tim
>
> >>> David Winsemius <dwinsem...@comcast.net> 1/25/2013 4:16 PM >>>
>
> On Jan 25, 2013, at 11:35 AM, Tim Howard wrote:
>
> > Great point, your fix (quote="") works for the example I gave.
> > Unfortunately, these text strings have commas in them as well(!). Throw a
> > few commas in any of the text strings and it breaks again. Sorry about not
> > including those in the example.
> >
> > So, I need to incorporate commas *and* quotes with the escape character
> > within a single string.
>
> Well you need to have _some_ delimiter. At the moment it sounds as though you
> might end upusing readLines() and strsplit( . , split="\\'\\,\\s\\").
>
> --
> david.
>
> >
> > Tim
> >
> >
> > >>> David Winsemius <dwinsem...@comcast.net> 1/25/2013 2:27 PM >>>
> >
> > On Jan 25, 2013, at 10:42 AM, Tim Howard wrote:
> >
> > > All,
> > >
> > > I have some csv files I am trying to import. I am finding that quotes
> > > inside strings are escaped in a way R doesn't expect for csv files. The
> > > problem only seems to rear its ugly head when there are an uneven number
> > > of internal quotes. I'll try to recreate the problem:
> > >
> > > # set up a matrix, using escape-quote as the internal double quote mark.
> > >
> > > x <- data.frame(matrix(data=c("1", "string one", "another string", "2",
> > > "quotes escaped 10' 20\" 5' 30\" \"test string", "final string",
> > > "3","third row","last \" col"),ncol = 3, byrow=TRUE))
> > >
> > >> write.csv(x, "test.csv")
> > >
> > > # NOTE that write.csv correctly created the three internal quotes ' " '
> > > by using double quotes ' "" '.
> > > # here's what got written
> > >
> > > "","X1","X2","X3"
> > > "1","1","string one","another string"
> > > "2","2","quotes escaped 10' 20"" 5' 30"" ""test string","final string"
> > > "3","3","third row","last "" col"
> > >
> > > # Importing test.csv works fine.
> > >
> > >> read.csv("test.csv")
> > > X X1 X2 X3
> > > 1 1 1 string one another string
> > > 2 2 2 quotes escaped 10' 20" 5' 30" "test string final string
> > > 3 3 3 third row last " col
> > > # this looks good.
> > > # now, please go and open "test.csv" with a text editor and replace all
> > > the double quotes '""' with the
> > > # quote escaped ' \" ' as is found in my data set. Like this:
> > >
> > > "","X1","X2","X3"
> > > "1","1","string one","another string"
> > > "2","2","quotes escaped 10' 20\" 5' 30\" \"test string","final string"
> > > "3","3","third row","last \" col"
> >
> > Use quote="":
> >
> > > read.csv(text='"","X1","X2","X3"
> > + "1","1","string one","another string"
> > + "2","2","quotes escaped 10\' 20"" 5\' 30"" ""test string","final string"
> > + "3","3","third row","last "" col"', sep=",", quote="")
> >
> > Not ...., quote="\""
> >
> >
> > X.. X.X1. X.X2. X.X3.
> > 1 "1" "1" "string one" "another string"
> > 2 "2" "2" "quotes escaped 10' 20"" 5' 30"" ""test string" "final string"
> > 3 "3" "3" "third row" "last "" col"
> >
> > You will then be depending entirely on commas to separate.
> >
> > (Needed to use escaped single quotes to illustrate from a command line.)
> >
> > >
> > > # this breaks read.csv:
> > >
> > >> read.csv("test.csv")
> > > X X1
> > > X2 X3
> > > 1 1 1
> > > string one another string
> > > 2 2 2 quotes escaped 10' 20\\ 5' 30\\ \\test ( file://\test )
> > > string,final string\n3,3,third row,last \\ col
> > >
> > > # we now have only two rows, with all the data captured in col2 row2
> > >
> > > Any suggestions on how to fix this behavior? I've tried fiddling with
> > > quote="\"" to no avail, obviously. Interestingly, an even number of
> > > escaped quotes within a field is loaded correctly, which certainly threw
> > > me for a while!
> > >
> > > Thank you in advance,
> > > Tim
> > >
> > >
> >
> > David Winsemius
> > Alameda, CA, USA
> >
>
> David Winsemius
> Alameda, CA, USA
>
David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA
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