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Support multi-character sep argument #2011

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Support multi-character sep argument#2011
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feature requestfread

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@richierocks
richierocks
opened on Jan 31, 2017

I want to write:

fread(
  "x<SEP>y\n1<SEP>a\n2<SEP>b",
  sep = "<SEP>"
)

This gives the error message

Error in fread("x<SEP>y\n1<SEP>a\n2<SEP>b", sep = "<SEP>") : 
  'sep' must be 'auto' or a single character

Real-world example of a dataset that uses <SEP> as a column separator:

http://labrosa.ee.columbia.edu/millionsong

Activity

  1. jangorecki
    added
    fread
    on Mar 5, 2017
  2. st-pasha
    added
    feature request
    on Jul 4, 2017

  3. MichaelChirico commented on Jul 23, 2025

    @MichaelChirico
    MichaelChirico
    on Jul 23, 2025
    Member

    8 years later and only one other community request for this... I suspect it will be nontrivial to support this & with potential performance impacts for the 1-character case.

    PRs welcome, but for now, pumping such files through sed or some other command-line tool first to convert the multi-character sep= into a one-character alternative seems good enough.

  4. MichaelChirico
    closed this as completedon Jul 23, 2025
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