On Oct 31, 2012, at 11:11 AM, David Winsemius wrote: > > On Oct 31, 2012, at 9:46 AM, chuck.01 wrote: > >> Hello, >> >> Here is a link to some data: >> http://www.epa.gov/emap/html/data/surfwatr/data/mastreams/9396/wchem/chmval.txt >> >> I am trying to read this in, and want to use: >> chmval <- >> read.table("http://www.epa.gov/emap/html/data/surfwatr/data/mastreams/9396/wchem/chmval.txt";, >> sep=",", skip= 84, header=T) >> >> the # 84, for 84 lines skipped needs to be derived from the 5th line of the >> txt file >> # Header Records: 85 >> >> so, I need that # (-1) for input into the read.table statement above > > That "# (-1)" is fairly cryptic to my reading, but it appears you are seeing > the > behavior of the "3" character in terminating input for comments.
That would be the shifted-"3". > Changing the comment character in the call to read.table will allow input > from that line. > > ?read.table > > You will need to read only the first 5 or 6 lines first, then execute a > separate read.table while skipping input from those lines as well as the > variable list that forms a secondary header. > >> headfrm <- read.table( file=url( >> "http://www.epa.gov/emap/html/data/surfwatr/data/mastreams/9396/wchem/chmval.txt";), >> nrows=6, sep=":", comment.char="") >> headfrm > V1 V2 > 1 Dataset EMAP Stream Chemistry Data > 2 File Name chmval > 3 Date Created 02/22/99 > 4 # Variables 75 > 5 # Header Records 85 > 6 # Data Records 711 > > > >> >> I've tried grep but that didn't work: >> (for this I downloaded the txt file and manually removed that hash mark!) >> >> grep("Header Records:", read.table("chmval.txt", header=T)) >> Error in scan(file, what, nmax, sep, dec, quote, skip, nlines, na.strings, >> : >> line 1 did not have 5 elements >> >> Any ideas? >> Can I just extract the 5th line? >> >> >> >> >> -- >> View this message in context: >> http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/extracting-information-from-txt-file-tp4648033.html >> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. >> >> ______________________________________________ >> 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. > > David Winsemius, MD > Alameda, CA, USA > > ______________________________________________ > 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. David Winsemius, MD Alameda, CA, USA ______________________________________________ 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.
