Its not completely clear what you want to preserve and what you want to eliminate but try this:
> L <- > readLines("http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?format=rdb&period=7&site_no=021973269,06018500") > L.USGS <- grep("^USGS", L, value = TRUE) > DF <- read.table(textConnection(L.USGS), fill = TRUE) > head(DF) V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 1 USGS 21973269 2009-09-27 00:00 6.96 4990 0.00 2 USGS 21973269 2009-09-27 00:15 6.96 4990 0.00 3 USGS 21973269 2009-09-27 00:30 6.97 5000 0.01 4 USGS 21973269 2009-09-27 00:45 6.97 5000 0.00 5 USGS 21973269 2009-09-27 01:00 6.98 5010 0.00 6 USGS 21973269 2009-09-27 01:15 6.98 5010 0.00 > pat <- "^# +([0-9]+) +([0-9]+) +(.*)" > L.DD <- grep(pat, L, value = TRUE) > library(gsubfn) > DD <- strapply(L.DD, pat, c, simplify = rbind) > head(DD) [,1] [,2] [,3] [1,] "01" "00065" "Gage height, feet" [2,] "02" "00060" "Discharge, cubic feet per second" [3,] "03" "00045" "Precipitation, total, inches" [4,] "02" "00065" "Gage height, feet" [5,] "05" "00060" "Discharge, cubic feet per second" On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 9:49 PM, stephen sefick <ssef...@gmail.com> wrote: > http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?format=rdb&period=7&site_no=021973269 > > I would like to be able to parse this file up: > > I can do this > x <- > read.table("http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?format=rdb&period=7&site_no=021973269", > skip=26) > > but If I add another gauge to this > > x <- > read.table("http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?format=rdb&period=7&site_no=021973269,06018500", > skip=26) > It does not work because there are two files appended to each other. > > It would be easy enough to write the code so that each individual > gauge would be read in as a different file, but is there a way to get > this information in using the commented part of the file to give the > headers? This is probably a job for some other programing language > like perl, but I don't know perl. > > any help would be very helpful. > regards, > > -- > Stephen Sefick > > Let's not spend our time and resources thinking about things that are > so little or so large that all they really do for us is puff us up and > make us feel like gods. We are mammals, and have not exhausted the > annoying little problems of being mammals. > > -K. Mullis > > ______________________________________________ > 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.