Hello Ravi, I was not aware that your dataset have special character "#" before NA. If it was just plain NA, it would have worked. So, It's not because of sep= ";".
See below: #Without "#" dat1<-read.table(text=" Remove this line Remove this line Remove this line Time;Actual Speed;Actual Direction;Temp;Press;Value1;Value2 ;[m/s];[°];°C;[hPa];[MWh];[MWh] 1/1/2012;0.0;0;NA;NA;0.0000;0.0000 1/2/2012;0.0;0;NA;NA;0.0000;0.0000 1/3/2012;0.0;0;NA;NA;1.5651;2.2112 1/4/2012;0.0;0;NA;NA;1.0000;2.0000 1/5/2012;0.0;0;NA;NA;3.2578;7.5455 ",sep=";",header=TRUE,fill=TRUE,skip=4,stringsAsFactors=FALSE) > dat1 Time Actual.Speed Actual.Direction Temp Press Value1 Value2 1 [m/s] [°] °C [hPa] [MWh] [MWh] 2 1/1/2012 0.0 0 <NA> <NA> 0.0000 0.0000 3 1/2/2012 0.0 0 <NA> <NA> 0.0000 0.0000 4 1/3/2012 0.0 0 <NA> <NA> 1.5651 2.2112 5 1/4/2012 0.0 0 <NA> <NA> 1.0000 2.0000 6 1/5/2012 0.0 0 <NA> <NA> 3.2578 7.5455 #With "#": Reading data from the .txt file. # In the documentation (http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/utils/html/read.table.html), comment.char="#" is an option in the read.table, but unfortunately it shows only blank columns after the first three columns. #I think Rui's method of reading header separately using readLines might be a good option. Or if you know the columnheadings, then you can do this: dat2<-read.table("dat2.txt",skip=4,col.names=c("Time","Actual Speed","Actual Direction", "Temp","Press","Value1","Value2"),fill=TRUE,sep=";",comment.char="c") > dat2 Time Actual.Speed Actual.Direction Temp Press Value1 Value2 1 [m/s] [°] °C [hPa] [MWh] [MWh] 2 1/1/2012 0.0 0 #NA #NA 0.0000 0.0000 3 1/2/2012 0.0 0 #NA #NA 0.0000 0.0000 4 1/3/2012 0.0 0 #NA #NA 1.5651 2.2112 5 1/4/2012 0.0 0 #NA #NA 1.0000 2.0000 6 1/5/2012 0.0 0 #NA #NA 3.2578 7.5455 A.K. ----- Original Message ----- From: vioravis <viora...@gmail.com> To: r-help@r-project.org Cc: Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2012 1:41 AM Subject: Re: [R] Skipping lines and incomplete rows Thanks a lot Rui and Arun. The methods work fine with the data I gave but when I tried the two methods with the following semi-colon separated data using sep = ";". Only the first 3 columnns are read properly rest of the columns are either empty or NAs. ********************************************************************************************** Remove this line Remove this line Remove this line Time;Actual Speed;Actual Direction;Temp;Press;Value1;Value2 ;[m/s];[°];°C;[hPa];[MWh];[MWh] 1/1/2012;0.0;0;#N/A;#N/A;0.0000;0.0000 1/2/2012;0.0;0;#N/A;#N/A;0.0000;0.0000 1/3/2012;0.0;0;#N/A;#N/A;1.5651;2.2112 1/4/2012;0.0;0;#N/A;#N/A;1.0000;2.0000 1/5/2012;0.0;0;#N/A;#N/A;3.2578;7.5455 *********************************************************************************************** I used the following code: dat1<-read.table("testInput.txt",sep=";",skip=3,fill=TRUE,header=TRUE) dat1<-dat1[-1,] row.names(dat1)<-1:nrow(dat1) Could you please let me know what is wrong with this approach? Thank you. Ravi -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Skipping-lines-and-incomplete-rows-tp4635830p4635952.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ 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.