read.csv row.names

Question

I\'m trying to read a column oriented csv file into R as a data frame.

the first line of the file is like so:

sDATE, sTIME,iGPS_ALT, ...

Answer 1

One possible reason can be an extra comma at the end of lines after the header line. Excel silently ignores them and removes while saving.

At least it was the case for me

Answer 2

You probably DO have an extra column.
But it probably arises from a stray formatted cell (or column of cells) that is actually empty, to the right of your data in your original spreadsheet.
Here is the key: Excel will save empty fields in the CSV file for any empty cells that are formatted in your sheet. Here is why you probably have this problem: Because when you open the CSV file with Excel and re-save it the problem with R goes away.
What is happening: when you pull a CSV file back into Excel, it will subsequently ignore empty cells to the right or below your data (since CSV files have no formatting).

Conclusion: be careful saving formatted spreadsheets as CSV files for use with statistical packages. Stray formatting means stray fields in the CSV.

Answer 3

I faced the same issue. It got resolved by adding header=TRUE like below

tempdata <- read.csv("C:\\File.csv",header=TRUE)

The first column which was the date column got aligned properly.

Answer 4

read.csv only assumes there are any row names if there are less values in the header than in the other rows. So somehow you are either missing a column name or have an extra column you don't want.