Text files

[Paul R. Jackson]

An important thing to keep in mind when importing excel created delimited
text files to lists, is that excel doesn't place a return on the last line.
This causes the list NOT TO IMPORT the last line. (At least from what I have
seen). Basically you need to manually place the return on the last line.

I hope this helps somebody avoid wasting hours such as I did working out
what's going on.

Paul

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Paul R. Jackson
 Experimental Programmer

 School of Psychology
 University of Queensland
 E:paulj at psy.uq.edu.au
 P:3365-6713
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: eprime at mail.talkbank.org 
> [mailto:eprime at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Edward Carney
> Sent: Friday, 13 February 2004 1:18 AM
> To: eprime at mail.talkbank.org
> Subject: RE: Text files
> 
> 
> You can also import text files into List objects.  The file 
> should have a first line with the names of the attributes and 
> a line corresponding to each level.  I've used Excel to 
> create these and saved them as tab-delimited text files.  
> (TAB is the expected delimiter for E-Prime.)
> 
> One good reason for doing things this way is that you can set 
> up the text/slide object and have the text placed from the 
> relevant attribute.  I helped program a study on memory for 
> narrative in which entire paragraphs were used and placed in 
> single attributes.  I've found text placement to be extremely 
> accurate from slide to slide.
> 
> Don't give up if E-Studio chokes on your first attempt.  
> Double check the formatting of the text file. (Word will do 
> fine.  Set Tools/Options/View to allow visible tabs/paras 
> when you're editing one of these files.  It makes the 
> formatting obvious, especially when lines are long and 
> organize themselves into paragraphs.)  Make sure that there 
> are no extra blank lines at the end.  In my experience this 
> doesn't usually happen in Excel, but you never know.
> 
> Another good reason for using external text files is that you 
> can set up randomizations ahead of time and adjust them for 
> various complex criteria, instead of writing complicated code 
> to check for these.  Use a separate list (or E-Studio 
> program) for each randomization.  This alone might save you hours.
> 
> Excel permits fairly easy "pseudo-randomizing".  Enter 
> =rand() in an entire column and then do a sort on all the 
> columns using the rand column as the "sort by" column.  Make 
> sure that you have your "Calculation" tab in Tools/Options 
> set to manual (use F9 to do the calculations).  Or do a Paste 
> Special (values) to save the values in place. Otherwise the 
> rand() gets recalculated all the time and you don't know 
> where you are.  Delete the rand() column before you save the 
> worksheet as a TXT file (or not; it's up to you).
> 
> Regards,
> Edward Carney
> Research Associate
> Univ. of Minnesota
> 
> On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, Paul R. Jackson wrote:
> 
> > You can import words from text files, see example 
> experiment in zip at 
> > www.psy.uq.edu.au/~paulj/words.zip
> >
> > This zip contains 'words.txt' which is a text file with a 
> word on each 
> > line and 'textfile.es' which is the experiment (obviously!).
> >
> > This example imports them into a text screen but the import 
> can be to 
> > anything really.
> >
> > Let me know if this doesn't make sense or doesn't work, 
> works fine on 
> > my machine.
> >
> > Paul
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >  Paul R. Jackson
> >  Experimental Programmer
> >
> >  School of Psychology
> >  University of Queensland
> >  E:paulj at psy.uq.edu.au
> >  P:3365-6713
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>