Hi Don and all,

I guess we're getting somewhere. Thanks. The file (first three columns,
first five rows) looks like this:

X10 X20 X30
00   00    01
00   02   02
00   00  00
00   01  01
00  00  00


I guess R is reading 00 as a character? But here's the weird thing: this
data (a raw matrix in R) was written out by R itself:

write.table(dat,"data",col.names=T,row.names=F,quote=F)

*If* I understand correctly, then this seems like very *bad behavior* on R's
part: you should be able to write out a matrix and read it right back into R
without hassles like this (but everytime I blame R, it turns out to be user
error, so...),

JJ



On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Don MacQueen <m...@llnl.gov> wrote:

> The error message says there is no method for converting from 'character'
> to 'raw'.
> Apparently, R is seeing character data in the file, and is trying to
> convert it to raw, since you specified raw, and it can't.
>
> See, for example,
>
>>  as('aa','raw')
>>
> Error in as("aa", "raw") :
>
>  no method or default for coercing "character" to "raw"
>
> (same error message)
>
> So I would ask, what are your data, really? Why are you asking for raw?
> Have you checked the help page for raw to make sure it's what you want?
>
> -Don
>
> At 5:23 PM +0100 2/11/10, Ivan Calandra wrote:
>
>> Content-Type: text/plain
>> Content-Disposition: inline
>> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>> Content-length: 3983
>>
>>
>> Well, it's too complicated for me! Here are what I would do (limited
>> since I'm still a newbie)
>>
>> 1) the syntax seems correct, it should work. The problem is somewhere
>> else, coming from your own file. Did you try skipping the colClasses
>> argument? To see how it looks like... If you can import it that way, try
>> str(x) to see what you have. It might help you.
>> 2) I've never had that much data to import, and for me read.table works
>> well.
>>
>> You might want to wait for the experts!
>>
>> Ivan
>>
>> Le 2/11/2010 17:14, Johan Jackson a écrit :
>>
>>>  Hi Ivan,
>>>
>>>  Thanks for the reply. Damn IT! My original post was screwed up. HERE
>>>  is what I did:
>>>
>>>  x <- read.table("data",header=TRUE,colClasses=rep('raw',600000))
>>>  #returns error:  no method or default for coercing "character" to "raw"
>>>
>>>  I've read the ?read.table and the colClasses argument. I'm still
>>> unclear:
>>>
>>>  1) colClasses is a character vector, is that right? That seems to be
>>>  what the help says, but I get an error when I do the above.
>>>
>>>  2) what is the most efficient way to read in huge amounts of data? In
>>>  the past I found that scan() and readLines() were slower than
>>> read.table.
>>>
>>>  Thanks,
>>>
>>>  JJ
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Ivan Calandra
>>>  <ivan.calan...@uni-hamburg.de <mailto:ivan.calan...@uni-hamburg.de>>
>>>  wrote:
>>>
>>>     Hi!
>>>
>>>     |"colClasses|       character. A vector of classes to be assumed
>>>     for the
>>>     columns."
>>>     I'm not an R expert and I don't know what your "flat file raw" is,
>>> but
>>>     the colClasses argument is to define whether the column will be
>>>     treated
>>>     as containing "factors", "logical", "integer" etc...
>>>     For more on read.table, read the manual "R Data Import/Export"
>>>     available
>>>     on the R-project website.
>>>
>>>     I don't know if it helps, but I hope it does!
>>>
>>  >
>>  >     Ivan
>>  >
>>  >     Le 2/11/2010 16:36, Johan Jackson a écrit :
>>  >     > Hi all,
>>  >     >
>>  >     > First off, it is surprising that there are no examples of how to
>> use
>>  >     > read.table() under ?read.table !
>>
>>>     >
>>>     > I am trying to read in a flat file of type 'raw'. It has 1000
>>>     rows and 600K
>>>     > columns. I have the RAM to accomplish this, but can't get the
>>>     data into R
>>>     > using read.table:
>>>     >
>>>     > x<- read.table("data",header=TRUE,colClasses=rep(,600000))
>>>     > #returns error:  no method or default for coercing "character"
>>>     to "raw"
>>>     >
>>>     > Then I thought that maybe the colClasses vector needed to
>>>     actually *be* the
>>>     > mode needed (here's where an example under ?read.table would help):
>>>     >
>>>     > x<- read.table("data",header=TRUE,colClasses=rep(as.raw(1),600000))
>>>     >
>>>     > I waited on the latter command for a couple of hours before
>>>     killing the
>>>     > process. What should the colClasses argument be?
>>>     >
>>>     > Should I be using another method to read the data into R? Previous
>>>     > experience using scan() and readLines() showed that read.table()
>>>     was faster,
>>>     > at least for those examples, so I've stopped trying to use those
>>>     other
>>>     > functions.
>>>     >
>>>     > Thank you,
>>>     >
>>>     > JJ
>>>     >
>>>     >       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>     >
>>>     > ______________________________________________
>>>     > R-help@r-project.org <mailto: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.
>>>     >
>>>     >
>>>
>>>            [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>
>>>
>>>     ______________________________________________
>>>     R-help@r-project.org <mailto: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.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>        [[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.
>>
>
>
> --
> --------------------------------------
> Don MacQueen
> Environmental Protection Department
> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
> Livermore, CA, USA
> 925-423-1062
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>

        [[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.

Reply via email to