On Mon, 15 Dec 2008, megh wrote:
Hi all, I my c: drive I have possibly 1,000 notepad files, with .txt extension. They are named as the dates on which they were saved i.e. 1st file name is "Volume_4-18-2008", 2nd one is "Volume_4-21-2008", 3rd one "Volume_4-22-2008" and so on............ Also, content of each file are in same format like : ******** content of 1st file ************* section : 1 ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- section : 2 ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- section : 3 ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- section : 4 ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- ----- --------- ---------- ----------- Here all files have 4-sections, just like shown here but contents within each section (i.e. dashed line here) differs file to file. What I have to do is I have to fetch contents of "section : 2" from each file and then save it to a R-object, matrix of list for further analysis. Can you ppl please tell me how to do that?
Here is the outline: *) use list.files() or Sys.glob() to get a list of the files *) write a function that takes the file name as its arg, uses readLines() to swallow the text and uses grep() to find the 'section' lines. Then put the 'dashes' in between two section lines into a separate object (say, dash.lines). Then use as.matrix( read.table(con <- textConnection( dash.lines ) ) close(con) to get the numeric values or maybe sapply( strsplit(dash.lines, "[ ]+"), as.numeric) *) debug this on one file *) use lapply to step thru the list of file names. See ?list.files ?Sys.glob ?readLines ?grep ?textConnection ?strsplit ?sapply HTH, Chuck
Thanks and regards, -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/How-to-fetch-specific-part-from-a-number-of-Text-files--tp21011017p21011017.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.
Charles C. Berry (858) 534-2098 Dept of Family/Preventive Medicine E mailto:cbe...@tajo.ucsd.edu UC San Diego http://famprevmed.ucsd.edu/faculty/cberry/ La Jolla, San Diego 92093-0901 ______________________________________________ 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.