fread fails to read entire file and does *not* throw warning nor error

[rsaporta]

sample data available here: http://www.state.nj.us/transportation/refdata/accident/2013/Monmouth2013Accidents.zip

Offending line (767 in linked file) has the following value: ""A"" ST

Compare to read.table:

f <- "Monmouth2013Accidents.txt"
ans1 <- fread(f)
ans2 <- as.data.table(read.table(f, header=FALSE, sep=",", comment.char="", quote="", stringsAsFactors=FALSE))

dim(ans1)
# [1] "766 rows X 47 cols"
dim(ans2)
# [1] "20,700 rows X 47 cols"`

possibly related to #1077.

[arunsrinivasan]

I get this with v1.9.5:

# Error in fread(f) : 
#   Field 48 on line 767 starts with quote (") but then has a problem. It can contain balanced unescaped quoted subregions 
# but if it does it can't contain embedded \n as well. Check for unbalanced unescaped quotes: 
# ""A"" ST                           , ,                         ,  ,25,25,        ,        ,
# N,                                                                                ,614  

[rsaporta]

great! Why the restriction on \n if only an ending character?
Any concern with the difference with read.table() ?

[arunsrinivasan]

Thanks for the report. quote = "" is implemented. Either use that, or wrap your file with "" around character columns so that quote = "\"" can then read it properly. See ?fread quote argument.

[arunsrinivasan]

Removed quote argument with a better fix (slightly more robust) for quotes. Please upgrade and test.