How to separate a text file into columns - r

Question

This is what my text file looks like:
1241105.41129.97Y317052.03
2282165.61187.63N364051.40
2251175.87190.72Y366447.49
2243125.88150.81N276045.45
328192.89117.68Y295050.51
2211140.81165.77N346053.11
1291125.61160.61Y335048.3
3273127.73148.76Y320048.04
2191132.22156.94N336051.38
3221118.73161.03Y349349.5
2341189.01200.31Y360048.02
1253144.45180.96N305051.51
2251125.19152.75N305052.72
2192137.82172.25N240046.96
3351140.96174.85N394048.09
1233135.08173.36Y265049.82
1201112.59140.75N380051.25
2202128.19159.73N307048.29
2192132.82172.25Y240046.96
3351148.96174.85Y394048.09
1233132.08173.36N265049.82
1231114.59140.75Y380051.25
3442128.19159.73Y307048.29
2323179.18191.27N321041.12
All these values are continuous and each character indicates something. I am unable to figure out how to separate each value into columns and specify a heading for all these new columns which will be created.
I used this code, however it does not seem to work.
birthweight <- read.table("birthweighthw1.txt", sep="", col.names=c("ethnic","age","smoke","preweight","delweight","breastfed","brthwght","brthlngth”))
Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Assuming that you have a clear definition for every column, you can use regular expressions to solve this in no time.
From your column names and example data, I guess that the regular expression that matches each field is:
ethnic: \d{1}
age: \d{1,2}
smoke: \d{1}
preweight: \d{3}\.\d{2}
delweight: \d{3}\.\d{2}
breastfed: Y|N
brthwght: \d{3}
brthlngth: \d{3}\.\d{1,2}
We can put all this together in a regular expression that captures each of these fields
reg.expression <- "(\\d{1})(\\d{1,2})(\\d{1})(\\d{3}\\.\\d{2})(\\d{3}\\.\\d{2})(Y|N)(\\d{3})(\\d{3}\\.\\d{1,2})"
Note: In R, we need to scape "\" that's why we write \d instead of \d.
That said, here comes the code to solve the problem.
First, you need to read your strings
lines <- readLines("birthweighthw1.txt")
Now, we define our regular expression and use the function str_match from the package stringr to get your data into character matrix.
require(stringr)
reg.expression <- "(\\d{1})(\\d{1,2})(\\d{1})(\\d{3}\\.\\d{2})(\\d{3}\\.\\d{2})(Y|N)(\\d{3})(\\d{3}\\.\\d{1,2})"
captured <- str_match(string= lines, pattern= reg.expression)
You can check that the first column in the matrix contains the text matched, and the following columns the data captured. So, we can get rid of the first column
captured <- captured[,-1]
and transform it into a data.frame with appropriate column names
result <- as.data.frame(captured,stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
names(result) <- c("ethnic","age","smoke","preweight","delweight","breastfed","brthwght","brthlngth")
Now, every column in result is of type character, you can transform each of them into other types. For example:
require(dplyr)
result <- result %>% mutate(ethnic=as.factor(ethnic),
age=as.integer(age),
smoke=as.factor(smoke),
preweight=as.numeric(preweight),
delweight=as.numeric(delweight),
breastfed=as.factor(breastfed),
brthwght=as.integer(brthwght),
brthlngth=as.numeric(brthlngth)
)