The datafile
Description
Many users find it convenient to prepare their data in Excel
or Access. However,
the data must be exported from these programs in either .csv
(Comma separated values) or .txt (TAB separated values) form for ASReml to read it.
Care must be taken with missing values which commonly appear as empty fields,
NA,
*
or .. ASReml will not recognise empty fields except in
.csv files,
and TAB delimited files if the
!CSV
qualifier is specified.
ASReml has a facility to convert an .xls file
to a .csv
file. It is invoked if there is no .csv file
or .as
with the same basename. It will also
convert a Genstat .gsh spreadsheet
file to .csv format.
The
data extracted are labels, numerical values and the results
from formulae. A label of * in an otherwise numerical column
is taken as a missing value as are empty cells.
Empty rows at the start and end of a
block are trimmed, but empty rows in the middle of a block
are kept. Empty columns are also ignored. A single row of
labels as the first non-empty row in the block will be taken
as column/field names. Empty
cells in this row will have a default names C1, C2 etc.
assigned.
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