[R-pkg-devel] data function from utils package

2016-08-16 Thread Mike Mehan
Hi,
I'm having trouble loading a csv file from my package data directory using
the data() function. We have an external file that gets updated every month
or so that we would like to include as data in our package. We are able to
import it using the data function when it is saved as an R Data file but
when we save it as a csv file it fails. I checked the help for data and it
says that it supports csv files but it says that it calls read.table with
the separator as a semi-colon instead of a comma. I checked the source code
and it also uses a semi-colon. Is this a bug? I would be really nice to be
able to use csv files since we refresh this file fairly often and I'd
rather not have to save it as an R data file each time. We also got it
working with system.file but using data() is much cleaner. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Mike

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Re: [R-pkg-devel] data function from utils package

2016-08-16 Thread Fox, John
Dear Mike,

Perhaps it's stating the obvious, but why not save the .csv file with ";" as 
the delimiter using the sep argument to write.csv() or write.table(), or save 
as a .txt file with " " as the delimiter?

Although I don't know why ";" was chosen in preference to "," for data(), I 
doubt that it's a bug since the behaviour corresponds to what's in ?data, as 
you noted.

I hope this helps,
 John

--
John Fox, Professor
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox




> -Original Message-
> From: R-package-devel [mailto:r-package-devel-boun...@r-project.org] On
> Behalf Of Mike Mehan
> Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2016 3:29 PM
> To: r-package-devel@r-project.org
> Subject: [R-pkg-devel] data function from utils package
> 
> Hi,
> I'm having trouble loading a csv file from my package data directory
> using the data() function. We have an external file that gets updated
> every month or so that we would like to include as data in our package.
> We are able to import it using the data function when it is saved as an
> R Data file but when we save it as a csv file it fails. I checked the
> help for data and it says that it supports csv files but it says that it
> calls read.table with the separator as a semi-colon instead of a comma.
> I checked the source code and it also uses a semi-colon. Is this a bug?
> I would be really nice to be able to use csv files since we refresh this
> file fairly often and I'd rather not have to save it as an R data file
> each time. We also got it working with system.file but using data() is
> much cleaner. Any suggestions?
> Thanks,
> Mike
> 
>   [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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> R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel

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