From Kurt.Hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at  Mon Sep 22 12:37:16 1997
From: Kurt.Hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at (Kurt Hornik)
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 13:37:16 +0200
Subject: R-alpha: -- data files :  read.table(..., header=TRUE)  -- Yes!
In-Reply-To: <199709181452.QAA19001@sophie.ethz.ch>
References: <6ren6men84.fsf@franz.stat.wisc.edu>
 <199709181452.QAA19001@sophie.ethz.ch>
Message-ID: <199709221137.NAA18680@aragorn.ci.tuwien.ac.at>

>>>>> Martin Maechler writes:

>>>>> "Doug" == Douglas Bates <bates@stat.wisc.edu> writes:
Doug> .....
Doug> I can't find copies of those messages so I will summarize here.

> sorry, once more.

Doug> One of them was unimportant - simply an observation that the
Doug> mis-typing of TITLE as TITLe in the documentation for the library
Doug> function is intentional.  

> yes! (it partly breaks the HTML version..)

> But with the new Rd (man) style and its perl scripts, the problem is
> gone anyway.

Yes, definitely.

Doug> The second was a query to Fritz with a
Doug> copy to this list on whether the data files in the bootstrap
Doug> library are indeed accessible with the data function.  It seems
Doug> not.

> This also has quite a bit changed in the current source.

> As Kurt says, all the packages have to be updated though before they
> work with the current directory structure.

Again, this will change with the new version.  If a new-style package
has a `data' subdirectory, its contents are installed along with the R
objects, shared libraries and help files etc.  Loading the pkg makes
these data sets available as well.

FRITZ:  When you update your pkg, please make sure that the data get
into the update as well.

Doug> f there was a convention that files ending with .data in a
> 						          ~~~~~
Doug> data directory should be read with read.table I think that would
Doug> be great.
> indeed!
> Maybe we should have  '.dat'
> in order  for the Win3.x  version to need less adaption for porting... 

Doug> Actually I think it would be "insanely great" if they
Doug> were read with read.table(filename, header = TRUE) 
> 			 -------------------  ##############
> Yes again!

Simply from the extension?  Or perhaps we could have a ``magic'' first
line telling a generic `read' what to do?  (A similar logic could be
applied to e.g. reading in xbase files using a (still unwritten) pseudo
method read.dbf which would be called if the generic read figures out
that it is looking at a dbase file (and again, using the result of
file(1) may be the better idea ...)

-k

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


R-alpha: -- data files : read.table(..., header=TRUE) -- Yes!
Kurt Hornik