Hi Actually I had to read the man before answering Carol. Here it goes:
stringsAsFactors: logical: should character vectors be converted to factors? Note that this is overridden by 'as.is' and 'colClasses', both of which allow finer control. So setting colClasses should work. Here is instructions for the colClasses argument: colClasses: character. A vector of classes to be assumed for the columns. Recycled as necessary, or if the character vector is named, unspecified values are taken to be 'NA'. Possible values are 'NA' (the default, when 'type.convert' is used), '"NULL"' (when the column is skipped), one of the atomic vector classes (logical, integer, numeric, complex, character, raw), or '"factor"', '"Date"' or '"POSIXct"'. Otherwise there needs to be an 'as' method (from package 'methods') for conversion from '"character"' to the specified formal class. Note that 'colClasses' is specified per column (not per variable) and so includes the column of row names (if any). And to complete as.is: the default behavior of 'read.table' is to convert character variables (which are not converted to logical, numeric or complex) to factors. The variable 'as.is' controls the conversion of columns not otherwise specified by 'colClasses'. Its value is either a vector of logicals (values are recycled if necessary), or a vector of numeric or character indices which specify which columns should not be converted to factors. Note: to suppress all conversions including those of numeric columns, set 'colClasses = "character"'. Note that 'as.is' is specified per column (not per variable) and so includes the column of row names (if any) and any columns to be skipped. I think these are the only settings influencing the conversions. Yours sincerely / Med venlig hilsen Frede Aakmann Tøgersen Specialist, M.Sc., Ph.D. Plant Performance & Modeling Technology & Service Solutions T +45 9730 5135 M +45 2547 6050 fr...@vestas.com http://www.vestas.com Company reg. name: Vestas Wind Systems A/S This e-mail is subject to our e-mail disclaimer statement. Please refer to www.vestas.com/legal/notice If you have received this e-mail in error please contact the sender. > -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] > On Behalf Of Rolf Turner > Sent: 26. juni 2014 10:39 > To: carol white > Cc: r-help@r-project.org > Subject: Re: [R] read a file of text with read.table > > > On 26/06/14 19:32, carol white wrote: > > > It might be a primitive question > > All questions are primitive; some questions are more primitive than others. > > > but I have a file of text and there > > is no separator between character on each line and the strings on > > each line have the same length. The format is like the following > > absfjdslf > > jfdldskjff > > jfsldfjslk > > > > When I read the file with read.table("myfile",colClasses = > > "character"), instead of putting the strings in a table of number of > > rows x length of string, read.table saves the file in a table of > > number of rows x 1 and each element seems to be a factor. Why does > > read.table not account for colClasses = "character"? > > (1) You might try setting stringsAsFactors=FALSE rather than > colClasses = "character". > > (2) Since your "table" has only one column you might as well use scan() > (with what="") and save wear and tear on the system. > > (3) In your example the strings do *not* have the same length; the first > has 9 characters, the next two have 10 each. > > (4) Do you want to get a data frame each column of which is a single > character? This was not clear from your email. Do you know how to do > this? (It's easy --- when the string lengths are indeed all the same.) > I appended a "g" to the first string and did: > > ttt <- scan("temp.txt",what="") > sss <- strsplit(ttt,"") > rrr <- as.data.frame(do.call(rbind,sss)) > rrr > V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 V8 V9 V10 > 1 a b s f j d s l f g > 2 j f d l d s k j f f > 3 j f s l d f j s l k > > Is this what you want? > > cheers, > > Rolf Turner > > ______________________________________________ > 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. ______________________________________________ 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.