On 6/12/2010, at 3:00 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> I was going to suggest using DIF rather than CSV. It contains more
>> internal information about the file (including the type of each entry),
>> but has the disadvantage of being less readable, even though it is ascii.
I don't think DIF is really the answer. My colleagues are familiar
with the *.csv concept; they have never heard of ``DIF''.
As I have said, we have had but few problems using *.csv. Better the
devil you know ...
Furthermore I have to deal with data provided by various sources
``external''
to the research project that I work for. I have to use the data that
these
sources provide, in the format in which they provide it. If they give
me
*.csv files I count myself lucky.
Finally, there seems to be no ``write.DIF'' function, i.e. there is no
way
to produce *.DIF output, as far as I can tell. Hence it would not seem
practical to use *.DIF as a data exchange standard.
>>
>> However, in putting together a little demo, I found a couple of bugs in
>> the R implementation of read.DIF, and it looks as though it ignores the
>> internal type information. Sigh.
>
> As of r53778, the bugs I noticed should be fixed. read.DIF now respects
> the internal type information, so it will keep character strings like
> "001" as type character (unless you ask it to change the type).
What does ``r53778'' mean?
cheers,
Rolf
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