Final Thoughts

1. Final Thoughts

There's something I haven't told you yet. When I said that read-dot-table was utils' main importing functions, I was serious.

2. Wrappers

Actually, read-dot-csv and read-dot-delim, the functions to import comma-separated values and tab-delimited files, are so-called wrapper functions around read-dot-table. They call read-dot-table behind the scenes, but with different default arguments to match the specific formats.

3. read.csv

For read-dot-csv, the default for header is TRUE and for sep is a comma, so you don't have to manually specify these anymore. This means that this read-dot-table call to import the CSV version of states, is exactly the same as this read-dot-csv call. Shorter and easier to read, if you ask me.

4. read.delim

Likewise, read-dot-delim sets the header and sep argument, among some others. This call to import the tab-delimited version of states, is exactly the same as this read-dot-delim call.

5. Documentation

If you have a look at the documentation of read-dot-table, you'll see that there are two more functions in there that we haven't discussed yet. read-dot-csv2 and read-dot-delim2. These functions exist to deal with regional differences in representing numbers.

6. Locale differences

Have a look at this csv file, states_aye-dot-csv, typical for the US and Great Britain, and its counterpart, states_nay-dot-csv. You'll notice that the states_nay uses commas for decimal points, as opposed to the dot for states_aye-dot-csv. This means that they can't use the comma as the field-delimiter anymore, they need a semicolon.

7. Locale differences

That's why the read-dot-csv2 and read-dot-delim2 functions exist. Can you spot the difference in default arguments again?

8. states_nay.csv

Let's try to import the states_nay-dot-csv file with the basic read-dot-csv function. R gives a result, but it clearly is not the result we want. It's a dataset with 5 observations but a single variable. If we try again with read-dot-csv2, it works perfectly this time! These were just some side notes to wrap up on this chapter. By now, you now how to import comma-separated, tab-delimited and even more exotic data formats. But there's much more to learn!

9. Let's practice!

I hope to see you in the next chapter to learn about the powerful readr and data table packages!

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