CODEWITHSUNDEEP
r
rnso
rnso

Reputation: 24535

Read clipboard from text editor vs spreadsheet in R

I have following text (indented by tabs) on a text editor (Geany) and also in Libreoffice spreadsheet in Debian Stable Linux: 

Aorta
    coronary
    brachio cephalic
    left common
        external carotid
        internal carotid
            ophthalmic
    left subclavian
        vertebral
        brachial
    left iliac
    right iliac

I copy it and use following command to paste it in R: 

library(psych)
dat = read.table(text = readClipboard(), sep="\t", header=FALSE, fill=TRUE, strip.white=TRUE, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

It works well when it is copied from spreadsheet: 

dat
      V1               V2               V3         V4
1  Aorta                                             
2                coronary                            
3        brachio cephalic                            
4             left common                            
5                         external carotid           
6                         internal carotid           
7                                          ophthalmic
8         left subclavian                            
9                                vertebral           
10                                brachial           
11             left iliac                            
12            right iliac

But when copied from text editor there is an error. Note empty line 7 and 'ophthalmic' coming in first variable: 

dat
           V1               V2               V3
1       Aorta                                  
2                     coronary                 
3             brachio cephalic                 
4                  left common                 
5                              external carotid
6                              internal carotid
7                                              
8  ophthalmic                                  
9              left subclavian                 
10                                    vertebral
11                                     brachial
12                  left iliac                 
13                 right iliac

What could be the cause and how can this be corrected?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 77

Answers (1)

A5C1D2H2I1M1N2O1R2T1
A5C1D2H2I1M1N2O1R2T1

Reputation: 193517

Here's a demo reading directly from a tempfile:

x <- tempfile()

cat("1\t2", "1\t2", "1\t2", "1\t2", "1\t2", 
    "1\t2", "1\t2", "1\t2\t3", "1\t2", "1\t2",
    file=x, sep="\n")

## readClipboard() or readLines(textConnection(readClipboard()))
infile <- readLines(x) 
fields <- max(count.fields(textConnection(infile), sep = "\t"))

## Will demonstrate the behavior you describe
read.table(text = infile, 
           sep = "\t", 
           header = FALSE, 
           fill = TRUE)

## Will do what you expect
read.table(text = infile, 
           col.names = paste0("V", sequence(fields)), 
           sep = "\t", 
           header = FALSE, 
           fill = TRUE)

Thus, try replacing readLines with readClipboard() directly, or wrap readClipboard() in textConnection().

Upvotes: 2

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