check_format: Checks the fishing trip input data

In fecR: Fishing Effort Calculator in R

Description

Checks the fishing trip data input data that is then used by the calc_fishing_effort function. The fishing trip data is stored in a data.frame which describes the trip details (departure and return date and time) and the fishing activities that occurred on the trip (by date, gear and area). The format of the input data is explained in the the Nicosia report Annex 4 and in the package vignette checking_data. The associated function calc_fishing_effort uses the input data to calculate the fishing effort of each trip. This function depends on the input data being in the correct format. The check_format function checks that the format and contents of the data are correct. When the function is called various messages are reported to the screen describing if the contents are OK and if not, why not. If the data is not correct then warnings are produced. Users should repeatedly check their date with this function and modify it as described until the check passes without warning. Only if the data passes the checks without warning can it used by the calc_fishing_effort. It is possible to ask the function to attempt to automatically correct simple errors (wrong case, numerics instead of characters etc). If this option is used the function outputs messages describing the changes being performed. The corrected data is returned by the function. Note that calling the function with automatic corrections does not guarantee that the returned data is correct. The returned data should be passed again into check_format to see if it now passes. More information on how check_format should be used can be found in the package vignette checking_data.

Usage

check_format(x, correct = FALSE)

Arguments

x	The input data.frame.
correct	Should automatic corrections to the data be attempted.

Value

The input data.frame, with or without attempted corrections.

See Also

See calc_fishing_effort for calculating effort. See the package vignette checking_data for more details on how to use check_format.

fecR documentation built on Sept. 9, 2017, 5:03 p.m.