Thanks Ingmar, but when I used merge in :
all <- merge(all, tmp), I get an error: Error in rep.int(rep.int(seq_len(nx), rep.int(rep.fac, nx)), orep) : invalid 'times' value is the error because of the way I initialised 'all'? what is the correct way of using merge in this case? thanks tania On 22 Apr 2008, at 14:12, Ingmar Visser wrote: > you may be looking for ?merge > hth, Ingmar > > On 22 Apr 2008, at 15:05, Tania Oh wrote: > >> Dear all, >> >> I want to read in 1000 files which contain varying number of columns. >> For example: >> >> file[1] contains 8 columns (mixture of characters and numbers) >> file[2] contains 16 columns etc >> >> I'm reading everything into one big data frame and when I try >> rbind, R >> returns an error of >> "Error in rbind(deparse.level, ...) : >> numbers of columns of arguments do not match" >> >> >> Below is my code: >> >> all <- NULL >> all <- as.data.frame(all) >> >> ##read in the contents of the files >> for (f in 1:length(fnames)){ >> >> tmp <- try(read.table(fnames[f], header=F, fill=T, sep="\t"), >> TRUE) >> >> if (class(tmp) == "try-error") { >> next ## skip this file if it's empty/non-existent >> }else{ >> ## combine all the file contents into one big data frame >> all <- rbind(all, tmp) >> } >> } >> >> >> Here is some example of what the data in the files: >> >> L3 <- LETTERS[1:3] >> (d <- data.frame(cbind(x=1, y=1:10), fac=sample(L3, 10, >> replace=TRUE))) >> >>> str(d) >> 'data.frame': 10 obs. of 3 variables: >> $ x : num 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 >> $ y : num 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 >> $ fac: Factor w/ 3 levels "A","B","C": 1 3 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 2 >> >> my.fake.data <- data.frame(cbind(x=1, y=2)) >>> str(my.fake.data) >> 'data.frame': 1 obs. of 2 variables: >> $ x: num 1 >> $ y: num 2 >> >> >> all <- rbind(d, my.fake.data) >> >> Error in rbind(deparse.level, ...) : >> numbers of columns of arguments do not match >> >> >> I've searched the R-site but couldn't find any relevant solution.I >> might have used the wrong keywords to search, so if this question has >> been answered already, I'd be very grateful if someone could point me >> to the post. Else any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. >> >> Many thanks in advance, >> tania >> >> D.Phil student >> Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics >> University of Oxford >> >> ______________________________________________ >> 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. > > Ingmar Visser > Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam > Roetersstraat 15 > 1018 WB Amsterdam > The Netherlands > t: +31-20-5256723 > > ______________________________________________ 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.