Combine csv files with common file identifier - r

Question

I have a list of approximately 500 csv files each with a filename that consists of a six-digit number followed by a year (ex. 123456_2015.csv). I would like to append all files together that have the same six-digit number. I tried to implement the code suggested in this question:
Import and rbind multiple csv files with common name in R but I want the appended data to be saved as new csv files in the same directory as the original files are currently saved. I have also tried to implement the below code however the csv files produced from this contain no data.
rm(list=ls())
filenames <- list.files(path = "C:/Users/smithma/Desktop/PM25_test")
NAPS_ID <- gsub('.+?\\([0-9]{5,6}?)\\_.+?$', '\\1', filenames)
Unique_NAPS_ID <- unique(NAPS_ID)
n <- length(Unique_NAPS_ID)
for(j in 1:n){
curr_NAPS_ID <- as.character(Unique_NAPS_ID[j])
NAPS_ID_pattern <- paste(".+?\\_(", curr_NAPS_ID,"+?)\\_.+?$", sep = "" )
NAPS_filenames <- list.files(path = "C:/Users/smithma/Desktop/PM25_test", pattern = NAPS_ID_pattern)
write.csv(do.call("rbind", lapply(NAPS_filenames, read.csv, header = TRUE)),file = paste("C:/Users/smithma/Desktop/PM25_test/MERGED", "MERGED_", Unique_NAPS_ID[j], ".csv", sep = ""), row.names=FALSE)
}
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Because you're not doing any data manipulation, you don't need to treat the files like tabular data. You only need to copy the file contents.
filenames <- list.files("C:/Users/smithma/Desktop/PM25_test", full.names = TRUE)
NAPS_ID <- substr(basename(filenames), 1, 6)
Unique_NAPS_ID <- unique(NAPS_ID)
for(curr_NAPS_ID in Unique_NAPS_ID){
NAPS_filenames <- filenames[startsWith(basename(filenames), curr_NAPS_ID)]
output_file <- paste0(
"C:/Users/nwerth/Desktop/PM25_test/MERGED_", curr_NAPS_ID, ".csv"
)
for (fname in NAPS_filenames) {
line_text <- readLines(fname)
# Write the header from the first file
if (fname == NAPS_filenames[1]) {
cat(line_text[1], '\n', sep = '', file = output_file)
}
# Append every line in the file except the header
line_text <- line_text[-1]
cat(line_text, file = output_file, sep = '\n', append = TRUE)
}
}
My changes:
list.files(..., full.names = TRUE) is usually the best way to go.
Because the digits appear at the start of the filenames, I suggest substr. It's easier to get an idea of what's going on when skimming the code.
Instead of looping over the indices of a vector, loop over the values. It's more succinct and less likely to cause problems if the vector's empty.
startsWith and endsWith are relatively new functions, and they're great.
You only care about copying lines, so just use readLines to get them in and cat to get them out.

Answer 2

You might consider something like this:
##will take the first 6 characters of each file name
six.digit.filenames <- substr(filenames, 1,6)
path <- "C:/Users/smithma/Desktop/PM25_test/"
unique.numbers <- unique(six.digit.filenames)
for(j in unique.numbers){
sub <- filenames[which(substr(filenames,1,6) == j)]
data.for.output <- c()
for(file in sub){
##now do your stuff with these files including read them in
data <- read.csv(paste0(path,file))
data.for.output <- rbind(data.for.output,data)
}
write.csv(data.for.output,paste0(path,j, '.csv'), row.names = F)
}