Re: [R] "all rows must have the same length" error while using read.table

From: Jason Turner (jasont@indigoindustrial.co.nz)
Date: Sun 01 Apr 2001 - 13:19:53 EST

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Message-ID: <20010401151953.A5623@camille.indigoindustrial.co.nz>

> I tried to read the table bellow (table goes on with 54 rows) with
> the read.table
...
>
> What "length" is the error message referring to?

The number of columns in each row. Apparently, it was different in
at least two rows.

Possible causes:
1) repeated tabs, when there should've been one only. From the
format of the data you provided, this looks possible. With \t
representing a tab, R will interpret "3\t\t7" as a 3, two
separators, with a non-value between them (NA), and a 7 rather
than 3, separator, 7. If you're comfortable with vi, you can find
these in your file by ":s/\t\t" (without the quotes, of course).
grep gets confused on my system between \t being a "t" and
a tab. If you're certain that there are no deliberately blank
entries (check this!), you can remove repeated tabs inside vi with
:1,$s,\t\t*,\t,g

2) trailing tabs. Again, from within vi, you can clean these
up by
:1,$s,[\t ]*,,
which clears trailing spaces and tabs.

I usually leave a few perl, awk, or sed scripts lying around
just for such tidy-ups (plus empty lines, leading spaces, and
other annoyances). Keeps me from having to remember all the
things that have bitten me before.

Cheers

Jason

-- 
Indigo Industrial Controls Ltd.
64-21-343-545
jasont@indigoindustrial.co.nz
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• Next message: Bill Simpson: "Re: [R] Is this a bug with a simple arithmetic operation with a vector object?"
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• In reply to: hzi: "[R] "all rows must have the same length" error while using read.table"
• Next in thread: Jason Turner: "Re: [R] "all rows must have the same length" error while using read.table - correction"
• Reply: Jason Turner: "Re: [R] "all rows must have the same length" error while using read.table - correction"

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