Since the columns in the file are separated by a space character, " ", add the read.table argument sep=" ".
-Bill On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 2:21 PM Val <valkr...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi all, I am trying to read a messy data but facing difficulty. The > data has several columns separated by blank space(s). Each column > value may have different lengths across the rows. The first > row(header) has four columns. However, each row may not have the four > column values. For instance, the first data row has only the first > two column values. The fourth data row has the first and last column > values, the second and the third column values are missing for this > row.. How do I read this data set correctly? Here is my sample data > set, output and desired output. To make it clear to each data point > I have added the row and column numbers. I cannot use fixed width > format reading because each row may have different length for a > given column. > > dat<-read.table(text="x1 x2 x3 x4 > 1 B22 > 2 C33 > 322 B22 D34 > 4 D44 > 51 D53 > 60 D62 ",header=T, fill=T,na.strings=c("","NA")) > > Output > x1 x2 x3 x4 > 1 1 B12 <NA> NA > 2 2 C23 <NA> NA > 3 322 B32 D34 NA > 4 4 D44 <NA> NA > 5 51 D53 <NA> NA > 6 60 D62 <NA> NA > > > Desired output > x1 x2 x3 x4 > 1 1 B22 <NA> NA > 2 2 <NA> C33 NA > 3 322 B32 NA D34 > 4 4 <NA> NA D44 > 5 51 <NA> D53 NA > 6 60 D62 <NA> NA > > Thank you, > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > 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 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.