I usually use Unix tools to process really data beforehand (sed, awk), but if you want a pure R solution it is usually possible to kludge something together with scan() working line by line.
# read a line # if it contains stuff you aren't interested in, go on to the next line # if it contains one kind of interesting stuff, do X # if it contains another kind of interesting stuff, do Y and so on. I've done this when it was easier than alternative processing (though slower), and found that it worked best for me to read the entire line in as a string, then split it apart later and convert to numeric if appropriate. Sarah On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 2:37 PM, Titan8883 <jpla...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi all, > > I am a new graduate student who is also new to R. I am ok with the basics, > but the problem I am having right now seems beyond what I can do..so I am > looking for advice. I am trying to pull data from flat ASCII files, but they > do not have a "nice" structure so a simple "read.table" doesn't work. An > example first half of a data file is below: > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > 19 c:/data/WF-100/2008/20080911/trk/20080911.013115.007.17.txt > 10 s name of program that wrote this file trkplt name of program that > wrote this file > 10 GORDON machine that generated this file machine that generated this > file > 10 3.7 version of program > 10 3.6 version of this data file > 10 5.81 version of Universal Library > 10 20081121.145730 when this file was written > 10 Windows_XP operating system used operating system used > * > * radar characteristics > 11 WF-100 > 11 20000000 A/D rate, samples/second > 11 7.5 bin width, m > 11 800 nominal PRF, Hz > 11 0.25 nominal pulse width, microsec > 11 0 tuning, volts > 11 3.19779 nominal wave length, cm > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > ..the file goes on from there... > > How would I go about getting this data into some kind of useful format? This > is one of about 1000 files I will need to go through. I would ideally like > to get these into a format with each data file as a row with columns for the > various values with the description text removed(version of program, file > version, tuning volts, etc...). > > I'm not looking for a cut and paste answer, but perhaps some direction on > where I should start. I have only done basic .csv, table, and line inputs up > until now. > > Thanks for any advice -- Sarah Goslee http://www.functionaldiversity.org ______________________________________________ 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.
