From gregor.gorjanc at gmail.com  Thu Jun 15 13:16:52 2006
From: gregor.gorjanc at gmail.com (Gregor Gorjanc)
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 13:16:52 +0200
Subject: [Rd]  separators in data()
Message-ID: <449141A4.6090905@bfro.uni-lj.si>

Ben,

you confused read.csv and read.csv2. Separator in read.csv is ",", while
it is ";" in read.csv2. This is due to use of different decimal symbols
in some european languages - mine is one of them  and I really hate
this. So the situation is:

                      decimal separator
english               .       ,
some european lang.   ,       ;

There is then of course also a need to handle decimal separator and this
is done in read.csv2.

>   just out of curiosity:
> 
>   why is the default behavior in data() for reading in .csv files
> to use sep=";" (semicolon rather than comma)?  is this a historical
> artifact of some sort, or is there other logic to it?  It caught
> me by surprise since I was expecting it to be sep="," as in
> read.csv() ...
> 
>   cheers
>     Ben Bolker


-- 
Lep pozdrav / With regards,
    Gregor Gorjanc

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"One must learn by doing the thing; for though you think you know it,
 you have no certainty until you try." Sophocles ~ 450 B.C.



[Rd] separators in data()
Gregor Gorjanc