Question

I am unable to specify the correct argument for row.names in the function read.table()

here is simple text:

 name      sex     age  height  
1 x1        F       18   162  
2 x2        M       19   170  
3 x3        M       21   178  
4 x4        F       22   166  
5 x5        F       23   165  

when i read:

data1=read.table('test',head=T,sep='',row.names=T)  
invalid 'row.names' specification  

data1=read.table('test',head=T,sep='',row.names=T)  
invalid 'row.names' specification 

Other info:

> version  
               _                            
platform       i686-pc-linux-gnu             
arch           i686                           
os             linux-gnu                      
system         i686, linux-gnu                
status                                        
major          2                              
minor          15.1                           
year           2012                           
month          06                             
day            22                             
svn rev        59600                         
language       R                              
version.string R version 2.15.1 (2012-06-22)  
nickname       Roasted Marshmallows          

Answer 1

In read.table the argument row.names has to be inputted with a number (i. e. the column number that contains the row names) or a vector of names. See ?read.table for a complete explanation. Here:

data1 <- read.table('test',header=T,sep=" ",row.names=1)