tisFromCsv: Read time series from Comma Separated Values (.csv) file
In tis: Time Indexes and Time Indexed Series

Description Usage Arguments Details Value See Also

Reads tis (Time Indexed Series) from a csv file, returning the series in a list, and optionally storing them in an environment.

tisFromCsv(csvFile, dateCol = "date", dateFormat = "%Y%m%d", tz = "",
           tif = NULL, defaultTif = "business",
           save = F, envir = parent.frame(),
           naNumber = NULL, chopNAs = TRUE,
           tolerance = sqrt(.Machine$double.eps), ...)

`csvFile`	A file name, connection, or URL acceptable to `read.csv`. Also see the the rest of this help entry for required attributes of this file.
`dateCol`	name of the column holding dates. This column must be present in the file.
`dateFormat`	format of the dates in `dateCol`. If the `dateCol` cells contain Excel dates, use `dateFormat == "excel"`. If they are strings, see `strptime` for date formats.
`tz`	the time zone to be used by `strptime` when converting date strings into `POSIXlt` timestamps. The default is to use the current time zone, which means it can change from, say, EST to EDT in the spring, and back to EST in the fall. If you have an "impossible" time in your csv file, like 2 am on March 13, 2011, this will result in an unexpected `NA` in the created `ti` dates, which will result in those rows in your csv being effectively ignored.
`tif`	time index frequency of the data. If this is `NULL` (the default), the function tries to infer the frequency from the dates in the `ymdCol` column.
`defaultTif`	If the frequency can't be inferred from the dates in the `ymdCol` column, this `tif` frequency will be used. This should be a rare occurrence.
`save`	If true, save the individual series in the enviroment given by the `envir` argument. Default is `FALSE`.
`envir`	if `save == TRUE`, the individual series (one per column) are saved in this enviroment. Default is the frame of the caller.
`naNumber`	if non-`NULL`, numbers within `tolerance` of this number are considered to be `NA` values. NA strings can be specified by including an `na.strings` argument as one of the ... arguments that are passed along to `read.csv`.
`chopNAs`	if `TRUE` (the default), leading and trailing `NA` values are cut off of each column.
`tolerance`	Used to determine whether or not numbers in the file are close enough to `naNumber` to be regarded as equal to it. The default is about 1.48e-08.
`...`	Additional arguments passed along to the underlying `read.csv` function.

File Requirements: The csv file must have column names across the top, and everything but the first row should be numeric. There must be as many column names (enclosed in quotes) as there are columns, and the column named by dateCol must have dates in the format indicated by dateFormat. The dateCol column must be present.

Missing (NA) values: Missing and NA values are the same thing. The underlying read.csv has "," as its default separator and "NA" as its default na.string, so the rows

1
2
3

    
  20051231,,13,,42,NA,
  20060131,NA,14,,43,,NA

indicate NA values for both the Dec 2005 and Jan 2006 observations of the first, third, fifth and sixth series.

The values in the file are read into a single large tis series, with a tif (Time Index Frequency) inferred from the first six dates in the ymd column. The first date is converted to a ti (Time Index) of that frequency and becomes the start of the series. If chopNAs is TRUE, each individual column is then windowed via naWindow to strip off leading and trailing NA values, and the resulting series are put into a list with names given by lower-casing the column names from the csv file. If save is TRUE, the series are also stored in envir using those same names.