Preprocess the file surrounding the last field with quotes.  The
xx <- line is for purposes of making it self contained here and in
reality would
be replaced with the commented
line above it.  It simply reads the text in.

The yy <- line
then surrounds the fourth field with double quotes assuming
at least a space separates the fields as in your example.

Finally read.table reads it now that the fourth field
has been protected with quotes and closeAllConnections
closes the dangling connections.

# test data
Lines <- "1, A, 24, The Red House
2, A, 25, King's Home, by the Sea
"

# xx <- readLines("myfile.dat")
xx <- readLines(textConnection(Lines))
yy <- gsub('^( *[^ ]+ [^ ]+ [^ ]+ )(.*)', '\\1"\\2"', xx)
read.table(textConnection(yy), sep = ",")
closeAllConnections()



On 11/29/06, Alexander Nervedi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I have data like
>
> 1, A, 24, The Red House
> 2, A, 25, King's Home, by the Sea
> ...
>
> I'd like to read this in as three variables. I first tried
>
> temp <-read.csv(addresses, sep = "," ) it worked but line 2 was broken after
> King's Home, and by the Sea as placed in another line. and so i eneded up
> with more number of rows than in the data. when i tried
> temp <-read.csv(addresses, sep = "," , flush = TRUE) i got things right
> number of rows, but column 3 was truncated till the 3rd comma.
>
> Is there a way i can specify to R that "King's Home, by the Sea" is one
> word?
>
> u r pal, al
>
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