Stat10010: Help importing data with R

jripper

Ok, im having some trouble importing data with R (Lab 2). I have a txt file called pulse.txt which i have saved to my C drive in a folder called statistics and so the path name for the pulse.txt file should be "C:\Statistics\Pulse.txt".

Sooooo, i type in: pulse<-read.table(“C:\statistics\pulse.txt”,header=TRUE)
but i repeatedly get this error message:
Error: unexpected input in "pulse <-read.table(“"

If anyone can please give me some advice I'd be so greatfull because i really am on the brink of losing my mind after trying to get that one line right for the last 2 hours.... Thanks.

El Siglo

jripper wrote: »

Ok, im having some trouble importing data with R (Lab 2). I have a txt file called pulse.txt which i have saved to my C drive in a folder called statistics and so the path name for the pulse.txt file should be "C:\Statistics\Pulse.txt".

Sooooo, i type in: pulse<-read.table(“C:\statistics\pulse.txt”,header=TRUE)
but i repeatedly get this error message:
Error: unexpected input in "pulse <-read.table(“"

If anyone can please give me some advice I'd be so greatfull because i really am on the brink of losing my mind after trying to get that one line right for the last 2 hours.... Thanks.

Have you changed the directory of your files in R? Such that you set the directory to your "C:\Statistics" file? If you do it like that, you can import your file like:
pulse<-read.table("pulse.txt", header=T)

Also, have you checked your file for any spaces between characters? R tends to read these as separate columns. Make sure that you have no spaces between any characters in your excel sheet and then if you have to, save it as a tab delimited file and see if it works again.

jripper

Just got it, went to file and changed the working directory then typed in the command you suggested. Worked perfectly, now i can do my asgnmnt. Thanks for taking the time to reply, you're a hero. ;-)

bnt

Since R is orignally UNIX software, I expect it has problems handling backslashes in file paths. You could try replacing them with forward slashes ("C:/Statistics/Pulse.txt") or double backslashes ("C:\\Statistics\\Pulse.txt"), to see if that helps.

**Timbuk2**

Make sure you have the location exactly right (including capital letters), and also I would use double backslashes as such (this is also the directory I use).

data<-read.table("H:\\FILES\\Statistics\\file.txt", header=TRUE)

edit: bnt got there before me

El Siglo

No, it was a working directory problem (happens a lot when you start using the programme, takes time to get into the habit of setting the directory). When you don't set this to where you want to save etc... R automatically seeks out the "Documents Library" or "My Documents" as a default and that's no use to anyone.

Op, you might want to invest in a copy of "Statistics: An Introduction Using R" by Michael Crawley. He's a website of tasks, commands etc... to work with while reading the book. It only costs about €25 but is a really handy book to have.

Thomas_S_Hunterson

try something like this:

data<-read.table(file.choose(), header=TRUE)

Avoids the hassle of escaping characters.