CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rwrite.table
vashts85
vashts85

Reputation: 1147

write.table columns do not align with blanks

I have a mostly blank data frame that can be read using the input below:

structure(list(var1 = c(1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L
), var2 = c(NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA), var3 = c(NA, 
NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA), var4 = c(NA, NA, NA, NA, 
NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA), var5 = c(NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, 
NA, NA, NA), var6 = c(NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA), 
    var7 = c(1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L), var8 = c(NA, 
    NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA), var9 = c(NA, NA, NA, 
    NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA), var10 = c(NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, 
    NA, NA, NA, NA, NA)), .Names = c("var1", "var2", "var3", 
"var4", "var5", "var6", "var7", "var8", "var9", "var10"), row.names = c(NA, 
10L), class = "data.frame")

I would like to write this to a TXT file where it looks like everything is formatted properly and can be easily opened in Excel (I know about write.xlsx and while it solves this problem I want the file to be in txt format).

write.table(df3, file="test.txt", quote = FALSE, na = " \t", row.names = FALSE)

I tried this but the values do not align properly: for example, the values that should be under var7 show up on var6 intead. Also, while Excel manages to read the columns as being separate, the header row which contains the variable names gets read as one long vector. What gives?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 698

Answers (2)

Jilber Urbina
Jilber Urbina

Reputation: 61154

Use write.table(df3, file="test.txt", quote = FALSE, sep = "\t", na="", row.names = FALSE) Note that sep = "\t" is used instead of na = " \t" and set na="".

Upvotes: 1

vashts85
vashts85

Reputation: 1147

If I write:

write.table(df3, file="test.txt", quote = FALSE, sep="\t", row.names = FALSE, na="")

Then it works. I followed Jilber's advice about using sep="\t" and also doing the this for the na option, as otherwise the NAs would show up in the file.

Upvotes: 0

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