At least for Excel 2003 on my computer (Win XP) I can "persuade" Excel to treat cells like text by prepending a ' to the entry (eg, '1000). Then sqlFetch/RODBC should import these cells as character. [But a number would not be valid column name for a data.frame, and you may run into other trouble. See ?make.names]
regards, enrico > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- > Von: r-help-boun...@r-project.org > [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] Im Auftrag von Folkes, Michael > Gesendet: Dienstag, 5. April 2011 00:05 > An: r-help@r-project.org > Betreff: [R] RODBC excel - need to preserve (or extract) > numeric column names > > I'm using RODBC to read an excel file (not mine!). But I'm > struggling to find a way to preserve the column names that > have a numeric value. sqlFetch() drops the value and calls > them f1, f2, f3,... (ie field number). this is a different > approach from read.csv, which will append "V" prior to the > numeric column name. sqlFetch isn't so helpful. > > Is there a way to get the first line of data from the excel > file and place it in a vector? Perhaps I can use that method > and rename the dataframe column names later? > > thanks! > Michael > > _______________________________________________________ > Michael Folkes > Salmon Stock Assessment > Canadian Dept. of Fisheries & Oceans > Pacific Biological Station > 3190 Hammond Bay Rd. > Nanaimo, B.C., Canada > V9T-6N7 > Ph (250) 756-7264 Fax (250) 756-7053 > michael.fol...@dfo-mpo.gc.ca <mailto:michael.fol...@dfo-mpo.gc.ca> > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > 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.
