Following David's suggestion you might want to have a look at
https://confluence.clazzes.org/display/CSVEDIT/CSVEdit+Home .
I have not used it but it seems to get good reviews from people I know.
John Kane
Kingston ON Canada
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dwinsem...@comcast.net
> Sent: Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:42:25 -0800
> To: tghow...@gw.dec.state.ny.us
> Subject: Re: [R] read.csv quotes within fields
>
>
> 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
>
>
> [[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.
____________________________________________________________
FREE 3D MARINE AQUARIUM SCREENSAVER - Watch dolphins, sharks & orcas on your
desktop!
______________________________________________
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.
