Get "embedded nul(s) found in input" when reading a csv using read.csv()

Question

I was reading in a csv file.

Code is:

mydata = read.csv("mycsv.csv", header=True, sep=",", quote="\"") 

Get the following warning:

Warning message: In scan(file = file, what = what, sep = sep, quote = quote, dec = dec, : embedded nul(s) found in input

Now some cells in my CSV have missing values that are represented by "".

How do I write this code so that I do not get the above warning?

Answer 1

Your CSV might be encoded in UTF-16. This isn't uncommon when working with some Windows-based tools.

You can try loading a UTF-16 CSV like this:

read.csv("mycsv.csv", ..., fileEncoding="UTF-16LE") 

Answer 2

You can try using the skipNul = TRUE option.

mydata = read.csv("mycsv.csv", quote = "\"", skipNul = TRUE) 

From ?read.csv

Embedded nuls in the input stream will terminate the field currently being read, with a warning once per call to scan. Setting skipNul = TRUE causes them to be ignored.

It worked for me.