swizz-john wrote: > Hi people, > > my task is to analyse data that is formatted like this. > > date,bid,name,w1,w2,w3,m1,m2,m3,m4,m5,m6,m7,m8,m9,m10,m11,m12,debt2mkt,cds,equity > 28jul2009,1,"ABN Amro",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,56.5, > 29jul2009,1,"ABN Amro",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,56.5, > 30jul2009,1,"ABN Amro",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,55, > 31jul2009,1,"ABN Amro",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,55, > 03aug2009,1,"ABN Amro",.35,.4,.45,,.71,.96,1.05,1.14,1.22,1.26,1.3,1.35,1.38,1.41,1.44,,55, > 06aug2009,1,"ABN Amro",.35,.4,.45,,.72,.92,1,1.1,1.18,1.2,1.23,1.28,1.32,1.35,1.38,,53.75,
## ## Er - no, it'snot. ## > > It has 21 columns but not every column has a value, some only have commas instead. > > My file is named: test_data.csv and it is attached here: > test_data.csv If I open your attachment with Excel I see what you have above. If I open it with LibreOffice Calc I see the same as you are getting in R. When I open test_dta.csv with a plain text editor (I used Tinn-R, Notepad should also work) I see why you are not getting wjat you expect. Take a careful look at the data: All the commas are contained withing matching pairs of quotation marks. Hence they are all treated as plain text by sensible software. Hope this helps, Dave. PS - If this comes through as html can someone flame me, please. I'm using a web based service and don't yet know what format it sends... Thanks. ____________________________________________________________ South Africas premier free email service - www.webmail.co.za ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.