I have used file.create and file.append successfully to aggregate multiple .txt files. When I try it with .rtf files, however, I get a larger rtf file that only shows the contents of the first .rtf of many to be aggregated.
So I have 5 .rtf files, for example. dirFiles is the list of names to be aggregated:
file.create(fileCollection_r)
file.append(fileCollection_r,dirFiles_r)
Is this a bug, and I would I report it?
How can I aggregate multiple .rtf files?
First of all, it is not clear what file.create() resp. append is doing. You didn't tag for a specific programming language, so that part of your question is really unclear and you need to improve that.
Having said that: RTF files, are in the end, pure text files. They contain formatting information, such as
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf1671\cocoasubrtf100
{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Helvetica;}
{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;}
{\*\expandedcolortbl;;}
So, theoretically, you can just pull that text content from multiple RTF files, and put all of that into a single file.
Thus: simple use a file viewer, such as less, cat, or some windows/macos pendant, and A) check the textual content of your single RTF files and B) check out the textual content of the file that you created this way. That will tell you if the pure textual append did work.
But beyond that: it could very well be that the RTF format itself has certain limitations, that simply make it not possible to just append arbitrary RTF file content and end up with something that works as a correct RTF document.
Related
I am trying to find strings within files. I have a couple of things I want to accomplish.
load the files into R (I have a directory but I can't seem to read the files in in one line of code, they are all rtf files)
search within every file a certain string that can be modified (need to find words like "wrist" and/or "rist" and/or "ris" for example)
return all of the files that contain these words
thank you so much! please help!
I write data frames to csv files using write.csv(). When this is done, the output when viewed in a plain text editor, in particular vi or notepad++, shows no spacing between the column content and the commas, resulting in it being relatively hard to read. For example, the columns are not lined up down the page.
I have negative interest in using excel to view the csv files. I am definitely not looking for a suggestion for a csv viewer. Nor do I want instructions on how to modify the plain text file afterward. Padding needs to be spaces not tabs.
I am interested in how to get R to line up the columns in the plain text csv file so that they are easier to read using a non specialized plain text editor.
I could (and might) write my own routine that converts everything to some fixed width string format and print that. But, I would prefer to find that this is an option within write.csv() or similar common output library call.
[I just this moment found out about printf in R, and that might be the best answer to this conundrum].
I ask my question after searching an answer on stackoverflow and on the web, without success.
I'm sorry if there is already an answer somewhere.
Global objective
I aim to create my questionnaires in libreoffice ( I need to print it, it's not for an online survey), and secondly to use it in a R shiny app I've created for register the collected answers and to export the data.
I want to create the fields in R (questions, answers...) automatically from the styles of my questionnaires in .odt, .docx or others formats.
I need to have well formatted questionnaires, nice-looking.
There is the problem:
I have written a questionnaire on a libreoffice .odt file (or if necessary in microsoft word).
I uses styles for different text blocks: one style for the "questions", one for the "answer", one for the parts of the questionnaire, one for the "instructions"...
I want to get a database ( in .csv format) with one column with the styles, and one column with the text content.
Solutions?
I try to open the xml files in the .odt or .docx archives, but the conversion to a simpler and readable format seems quite difficult.
Is it possible to export a toc from libreoffice or word to a spreadsheet format?
R can read in such files (.odt or .dox, or.xml) ?
Thank you very much for your ideas, and more generaly for your feedbacks on my project.
I'm sorry for my english
I would recommend using .Rmd (for rmarkdown) or .Rnw (for knitr) files as the source for your questionaires, rather than starting with .odt or .docx. You can produce output in various formats, including .docx, .pdf, .html (only .pdf for .Rnw) to display the questionaire to the subjects, but you can also develop functions to manage the data, or even interactive displays to collect and record the data.
I'm not familiar with R packages that do all of this for you, but I expect they already exist. Maybe someone else will give an answer with more details.
You might explore using the .fodt format in libreOffice Writer. That format is an "unzipped" version of the Writer xml format, so could be directly readable by xml utilities (and probably R, with appropriate libraries). I note that for another answer you seemed to want to avoid markdown or knitr composition, and .fodt would provide a "text" format completely compatible with LibreOffice as a front end.
(Note the other parts of LibreOffice have "flat" versions, so you could, in theory, process text versions of spreadsheets, graphics, and presentation files in your R utility.)
A few web searches indicates some relevant libraries and utilities for R exist, which may get you closer to what you need for your project.
In DocFX, I have a block of content which i need to put on all (or most) markdown files. Is there a way to merge or pull the contents of another md file in to the current file? Basically i am trying not to repeat myself and looking for some sort of sharing mechanism.
You can do this with file inclusion which is part of the DocFX flavored markdown (DFM).
DFM adds syntax to include other file parts into current file, the
included file will also be considered as in DFM syntax.
I have two pdf files and two text files which are converted into ebcdif format. The two text files acts like cover files for the pdf files containing details like pdf name, number of pages, etc. in a fixed format.
Cover1.det, Firstpdf.pdf, Cover2.det, Secondpdf.pdf
Format of the cover file could be:
Firstpdf.pdf|22|03/31/2012
that is
pdfname|page num|date generated
which is then converted into ebcdic format.
I want to merge all these files in a single file in the order first text file, first pdf file, second text file, second pdf file.
The idea is to then push this single merged file into mainframes using scp.
1) How to merge above mentioned four files into a single file?
2) Do I need to convert pdf files also in ebcdic format ? If yes, how ?
3) As far as I know, mainframe files also need record length details during transit. How to find out record length of the file if at all I succeed in merging them in a single file ?
I remember reading somewhere that it could be done using put and append in ftp. However since I have to use scp, I am not sure how to achieve this merging.
Thanks for reading.
1) Why not use something like pkzip?
2) I don't think converting the pdf files to ebcdic is necessary or even possible. The files need to be transfered in Binary mode
3) Using pkzip and scp you will not need the record length
File merging could easily be achieved by using Cat command in unix with > and >> append operators.
Also, if the next file should start from a new line (as was my case) a blank echo could be inserted between files.