Removing new lines in R - r

Question

I am trying to bring multiple rows into one cell in my CSV file. I first began with converting my text file into a CSV file, however the final column needs to have all the contents in one cell, and it's currently being split into multiple. The CSV File currently looks like the first picture, and needs to look like the second picture. Picture1Picture2
I have the following code:
mydata = read.table ("rolled_swiftmessage_test.txt", sep="|", allowEscapes
= TRUE, fill = FALSE)
write.table(mydata, file="rolled_swiftmessage_test.csv",sep=",",col.names=
FALSE,row.names= FALSE)
Currently it produces Picture_1, and I need it to produce picture_2. How do I fix it? Thanks!

Answer 1

After corresponding with the OP and seeing the kind of data that she has, this is my updated answer:
mydata <- read.table ("Test_TextFile.txt", sep="|", allowEscapes = TRUE, fill = FALSE, stringsAsFactors = F)
# Remove rows full of dashes
for(row in 1:nrow(mydata)) {
if(grepl('^\\-+$', mydata$V1[row])) mydata <- mydata[-row,]
}
empty_rows <- which(grepl('^\\s*$', mydata$V1))
rows_to_squeeze <- split(empty_rows, cumsum(c(1, diff(empty_rows) != 1)))
for(i in length(rows_to_squeeze):1) {
mydata$V12[rows_to_squeeze[[i]][1] - 1] <- paste(mydata$V12[seq(rows_to_squeeze[[i]][1] - 1, rows_to_squeeze[[i]][length(rows_to_squeeze[[i]])])], collapse = ' ')
mydata <- mydata[-seq(rows_to_squeeze[[i]][1], rows_to_squeeze[[i]][length(rows_to_squeeze[[i]])]),]
}
write.table(mydata, file="rolled_swiftmessage_test.csv", sep=",", col.names = FALSE, row.names = FALSE)
Original answer
Here you have my attempt at this. It's not pretty, but I think it works. Basically, I read the file as lines of text, not a table, I operate on the lines to join those that belong on the same 'message' cell, and then I put them in a nice data frame that can be saved as a csv file. Let me know if you need any other tweaks:
install.packages('stringr') ## if not installed yet
library(stringr) ## in order to use str_detect and str_split below
mydata <- readLines("rolled_swiftmessage_test.txt")
new_mydata = vector('character')
current <- 1
while(!is.na(mydata[current])) {
if(str_detect(mydata[current], '\\{')) {
i <- 1
while(!str_detect(mydata[current + i], '\\}')) {
mydata[current] <- paste(mydata[current], mydata[current + i], collapse = ' ')
i = i + 1
}
mydata[current] <- paste(mydata[current], mydata[current + i], collapse = ' ')
mydata[current] <- gsub('\\| \\| \\| \\|', '', mydata[current])
new_mydata = c(new_mydata, mydata[current])
current = current + i + 1
} else {
new_mydata = c(new_mydata, mydata[current])
current = current + 1
}
}
new_mydata <- sapply(new_mydata, function(x) str_split(x, '\\|'))
new_mydata <- as.data.frame(t(as.data.frame(new_mydata)))
write.table(new_mydata, file="rolled_swiftmessage_test.csv", sep=",", col.names = FALSE, row.names = FALSE)
The resulting image after opening the csv file (notice that I added the same row to the original text file three times just so that I would have more lines for testing):