I added an informative subject line; that's a good idea in this list so
people can choose whether to read your question or not.
On 07/02/2016 3:18 PM, Walter Niessen wrote:
Helpers,
I am a pretty savvy computer user (over 40 years) but am having trouble with
the most basic process in using the R program. I am taking a course to learn
the statistics utility of “R” but can’t seem to get past the opening where it
shows the student how to input data into R.
It suggests identifying as the a target folder in the Properties of the R x64
3.2.3 icon (I use a 64-bit Windows 7 OS) the location where data files are
found. I entered:
As the Target: "C:\Program Files\R\R-3.2.3\bin\x64\Rgui.exe" ... which
contains Rgui.exe and the supporting dlls etc.
As the Start in: "C:\Program Files\R\R-3.2.3\Appendix" ... where Appendix is a
folder which contains data files such as the text file DATA1.txt which I created from an
Excel file.
When I try and get R to input the data, I get the following sequence of
messages:
X=scan("DATA1.txt")
Error in file(file, "r") : cannot open the connection
In addition: Warning message:
In file(file, "r") :
cannot open file 'DATA1.txt': No such file or directory
When I try again but use the complete file description, I get:
X=scan("C:\Program Files\R\R-3.2.3\Appendix\DATA1.txt")
Error: '\P' is an unrecognized escape in character string starting ""C:\P"
I hate to ask a question not related to R or its features (that may come
later), but, clearly, the first baby step is to be able to load data into the
application . . . and, I am really frustrated with my inability to do so.
There are a few things you should know.
1. R uses the \ character as an escape, so \t is a tab, etc. If you
really want a \ in a string, you need to escape it, i.e. enter \\. This
is a pain, so you can instead use / in place of \\ when specifying file
paths.
2. I think your course is giving bad advice. Don't mess with the
shortcut. Use RStudio as your front end. It allows you to set up
"projects"; it remembers the current directory for each project, so you
just "Open project" X, and R will be started in the directory of X.
3. If you don't want to use RStudio, then run choose.dir() in R at the
start of your session. It lets you set the current directory to the one
with your files in it, using a old-fashioned Windows dialog box. If
things stop working the way you expect, run getwd() to get R to print
what's the current directory.
4. You can also use file.choose() to use Windows dialogs to pick a
file; then it doesn't really matter what the current directory is.
I hope some of this helps.
Duncan Murdoch
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