[R] Reading a file created with Fortran

[Mike Prager]

Ben Bolker <bolker at ufl.edu> wrote:

> Dennis Fisher <fisher <at> plessthan.com> writes:

> > I am trying to read a file written by Fortran.  Several lines of the  
> > file are pasted below:
> 
>  Perhaps read.fwf is what you want?  (fwf stands for
> "fixed width format").  You would have to work out the
> field widths, but it would seem to be pretty straightforward).

A couple of points. First, since you know the format statement,
perhaps you control the Fortran program. Then, it might be nicer
to introduce whitespace between the data items, which would
serve two purposes: making read.table() work on the data set and
making it easier for humans to check the data file more easily.

Second, you could look at read.fortran() -- a function that
takes a lightly modified Fortran format specification as an
argument. That seems even better for your purposes than
read.fwf.

-- 
Mike Prager, NOAA, Beaufort, NC
* Opinions expressed are personal and not represented otherwise.
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