My solution is a bit different.
Most student oriented files are relatively small (less than 1 MB) and
can just be copied to the clipboard from their editor/spreadsheet
progam.
Most students know how to open excel or text files. I have them do
that and then just copy the data to the clipboard (from Excel or
OpenOffice or Word or their favorite text editor)
then,
my.data <- read.clipboard() #from the psych package
and their data are in a suitable format.
If they are copying from excel,
my.data <- read.clipboard.tab() #will read directly from an Excel file
my.data <- read.clipboard.csv() # will read from a file in comma
delimited form.
etc.
The one problem I have had doing this is some student's do not know
what the clipboard is!
Bill
At 1:44 PM -0400 11/2/10, Ralph O'Brien, PhD wrote:
========================
If you have a path with backslashes in the Windows clipboard you can
just do this:
myPath <- readClipboard()
setwd(myPath)
which eliminates the need for any conversion.
========================
But this is still Windows-centric functionality (not platform independent)
and it hides what dataset was in play (not a good programming practice in
the real world).
On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Gabor Grothendieck
<[email protected]>wrote:
On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 12:51 PM, Ralph O'Brien, PhD
<[email protected]> wrote:
> A huge plus for R is that it runs nearly identically on all three major
> platforms. There is every reason to make our teaching as
> platform-independent as we can.
>
> The choose.dir() function is not found on the Mac release (I'm still at
v.
> 2.11.1), so I would advise against using it, especially since it is
trivial
> to teach and use code that is "plain vanilla."
>
> My scripts to students begin with something like:
>
> # Uncomment one of these path2data statements and
> # insert your appropriate path specification.
> # path2data <- "C:/EPBI431/datasets" # Windows (convert to forward
> slashes)
> # path2data <- "/Users/ralphobrien/AllDocs/teaching/EPBI431/datasets"
#
> Mac OS
> setwd(path2data)
>
> Later, I might simply give them:
>
> # setwd("C:/EPBI431/datasets") # Windows (convert to forward slashes)
> # setwd("/Users/ralphobrien/AllDocs/teaching/EPBI431/datasets") # Mac OS
>
> Some students have never encountered path specifications, so when I
> introduce this, I show them how to use "Properties" (Windows XP) and "Get
> Info" (Mac OS) to copy-paste what is needed, converting the back slashes
to
> forward slashes for Windows.
If you have a path with backslashes in the Windows clipboard you can
just do this:
myPath <- readClipboard()
setwd(myPath)
which eliminates the need for any conversion.
--
Statistics & Software Consulting
GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc.
tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP
email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com
--
Ralph O'Brien, PhD
Professor, Dept of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Case Western Reserve University
Office: 216.368.1927
Cell: 216.312.3203
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