Changing file encoding in R

Question

I was having difficulties importing an excel sheet into R (csv). However, after reading this post, I was able to successfully import it. However, I noticed that some of the numbers in a particular column have transformed into unwanted characters-"Ï52,386.43" "Ï6,887.61" "Ï32,923.45". Any ideas how I can change these to numbers?

Here's my code below:

df <- read.csv("data.csv", header = TRUE, strip.white = TRUE,
                fileEncoding="latin1",  stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

I've also tried fileEncoding = "UTF-8" but this doesn't work-I'm getting the following warning:

Warning messages:
1: In read.table(file = file, header = header, sep = sep, quote = quote,  :
                 invalid input found on input connection 'data.csv'
               2: In read.table(file = file, header = header, sep = sep, quote = quote

I am using a mac with "R version 3.2.4 (2016-03-10)" (if that makes any difference). Here are the first ten entries from the affected column:

 [1] "Ï52,386.43" "Ï6,887.61" "Ï32,923.45" ""           "Ï82,108.44"
 [6] "Ï6,378.10"  ""           "Ï22,467.43" "Ï3,850.14"  "Ï5,547.83"

can you please copy some line from your file? very hard to help you without data — agstudy, Aug 17 '16 at 18:32
perhaps you can provide a link to the file, displaying the first few lines of data won't help... — Cyrus Mohammadian, Aug 17 '16 at 19:18
@CyrusMohammadian, I've tried-same error-`Error in type.convert(data[[i]], as.is = as.is[i], dec = dec, numerals = numerals, : invalid multibyte string at '41,<33>86.23'` — John_dydx, Aug 17 '16 at 19:37
I would like to have the raw data not the read data. Please, copy and paste from your text file. — agstudy, Aug 17 '16 at 19:37
@agstudy, unfortunately, the data is confidential-I wish I could just post it but I can't. I'll see if I can post something similar. — John_dydx, Aug 17 '16 at 19:40
@john try to use somthing like `iconv(dat$V1,"UTF-8","UTF-8")` — agstudy, Aug 17 '16 at 19:47
@agstudy, it gives exactly the same list of transformed characters-` "Ï52,386.43"`. However, I think I've found out what the problem is-its a pound sign (£) that got changed into `Ï` when the data was saved in csv from an xls file. Thanks for your assistance. I'll write an answer. — John_dydx, Aug 17 '16 at 20:13

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 17 '16 at 20:15

0

It turns out the issue was a pound sign that got changed into Ï in the process of saving an xls file into csv format (in windows-opened in a mac). Thanks for your replies.

answered Aug 17 '16 at 20:15

John_dydx

951
1
14
27

Changing file encoding in R

1 Answers1