Reading a European .csv
In most of Europe, commas (rather than periods) are used as decimal points. This creates an issue for comma-separated value files: since commas can no longer be used to separate values, semicolons are used instead.
For this reason, readr
provides read_csv2()
, which looks for ;
to indicate column breaks and ,
to indicate decimal points. Other than that, it behaves just like read_csv()
.
In this exercise, you'll see what happens when you incorrectly use read_csv()
on datasets that contain values separated by semicolons. You'll import a dataset that contains information on the girth, height, and volume for Black Cherry Trees.
This exercise is part of the course
Reading Data into R with readr
Exercise instructions
The readr
package and the trees.csv
file are loaded in your workspace.
- Correctly import
trees.csv
with theread_csv2()
function and store the result astrees
. - View the dimensions of
trees
using thedim()
function and print the first six rows oftrees
to the console. - Now incorrectly import the data with
read_csv()
and store the result astrees_wrong
. - View the dimensions of
trees_wrong
using thedim()
function and print the first six rows oftrees_wrong
to the console.
Hands-on interactive exercise
Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.
# Import data with read_csv2(): trees
# View dimensions and head of trees
# Import data with read_csv(): trees_wrong
# View dimensions and head of trees_wrong