This is very consistent with Microsoft's philosophy: they know better than you what you want to do.
--- David Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > A common process when data is obtained in an Excel > spreadsheet is to save > the spreadsheet as a .csv file then read it into R. > Experienced users > might have learned to be wary of dates (as I have) > but possibly have not > experienced what just happened to me. I thought I > might just share it with > r-help as a cautionary tale. > > I received an Excel file giving patient details. > Each patient had an ID > code in the form of three letters followed by four > digits. (Actually a New > Zealand National Health Identification.) I saved the > .xls file as .csv. > Then I opened up the .csv (with Excel) to look at > it. In the column of ID > codes I saw: Aug-99. Clicking on that entry it > showed 1/08/2699. > > In a column of character data, Excel had interpreted > AUG2699 as a date. > > The .csv did not actually have a date in that cell, > but if I had saved the > .csv file it would have. > > David Scott > > _________________________________________________________________ > David Scott Department of Statistics, Tamaki Campus > The University of Auckland, PB 92019 > Auckland 1142, NEW ZEALAND > Phone: +64 9 373 7599 ext 86830 Fax: +64 9 373 7000 > Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Graduate Officer, Department of Statistics > Director of Consulting, Department of Statistics > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch 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@stat.math.ethz.ch 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.
