Opening csv of specific sequences: NAs come out of nowhere? - r

Question

I feel like this is a relatively straightforward question, and I feel I'm close but I'm not passing edge-case testing. I have a directory of CSVs and instead of reading all of them, I only want some of them. The files are in a format like 001.csv, 002.csv,...,099.csv, 100.csv, 101.csv, etc which should help to explain my if() logic in the loop. For example, to get all files, I'd do something like:
id = 1:1000
setwd("D:/")
filenames = as.character(NULL)
for (i in id){
if(i < 10){
i <- paste("00",i,sep="")
}
else if(i < 100){
i <- paste("0",i,sep="")
}
filenames[[i]] <- paste(i,".csv", sep="")
}
y <- do.call("rbind", lapply(filenames, read.csv, header = TRUE))
The above code works fine for id=1:1000, for id=1:10, id=20:70 but as soon as I pass it id=99:100 or any sequence involving numbers starting at over 100, it introduces a lot of NAs.
Example output below for id=98:99
> filenames
098 099
"098.csv" "099.csv"
Example output below for id=99:100
> filenames
099
"099.csv" NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
"100.csv"
I feel like I'm missing some catch statement in my if() logic. Any insight would be greatly appreciated! :)

Answer 1

You can avoid the loop for creating the filenames
filenames <- sprintf('%03d.csv', 1:1000)
y <- do.call(rbind, lapply(filenames, read.csv, header = TRUE))

Answer 2

#akrun has given you a much better way of solving your task. But in terms of the actual issue with your code, the problem is that for i < 100 you subset by a character vector (implicitly converted using paste) while for i >= 100 you subset by an integer. When you use id = 99:100 this translates to:
filenames <- character(0)
filenames["099"] <- "099.csv" # length(filenames) == 1L
filenames[100] <- "100.csv" # length(filenames) == 100L, with all(filenames[2:99] == NA)
Assigning to a named member of a vector that doesn't yet exist will create a new member at position length(vector) + 1 whereas assigning to a numbered position that is > length(vector) will also fill in every intervening position with NA.

Answer 3

Another approach, although less efficient than #akrun's solution, is with the following function:
merged <- function(id = 1:332) {
df <- data.frame()
for(i in 1:length(id)){
add <- read.csv(sprintf('%03d.csv', id[i]))
df <- rbind(df,add)
}
df
}
Now, you can merge the files with:
dat <- merged(99:100)
Furthermore, you can assign columnnames by inserting the following line in the function just before the last line with df:
colnames(df) <- c(..specify the colnames in here..)