IGNORE under $DATA ignored

Dear all, I have a technical question to ask regarding the IGNORE=@ option under $DATA. I have a data set created by R and submitted to run under NONMEM, but somehow the IGNORE option is not read by the program and give me a list of error messages saying: (DATA ERROR) RECORD 1, DATA ITEM 14, CONTENTS: "DOSE" ITEM IS NOT A NUMBER. (DATA ERROR) RECORD 1, DATA ITEM 15, CONTENTS: "SEX" ITEM IS NOT A NUMBER. ​I tried to move the IGNORE to a different line without any effect. Additionally, I tried to use different output functions (write.table and write.csv) under R, tried different coding (using fileEncoding= option) but this problem still occurs. I am wondering if anyone else has come across this problem and if so, could you please share your resolving experience? All of the R and NONMEM program were run under Red Hat Linux. Thanks​ in advance for your kind help. Best -- Xinting

Hi Xinting: Do you happen to have “quote = TRUE” in the write.csv line? If so, try “quote=FALSE”. Regards, -Dani

Hi Xinting, It looks like your data file has quotes in it instead of just character data. You could confirm this in Linux with the head command (head data.csv). The fix is to use quote=FALSE in your call to write.csv in R. Thanks, Bill

Dear Xinting, I have faced this problem several times. I have not identified the source for this problem,but I think this problem is with R rather than NONMEM. When R outputs data, maybe there is a space introduced in the @ column you are using to IGNORE the variable names at the top of your data. There are two solutions which worked for me : 1. Go to the cell immediately below the @ at the top our data and delete the contents (even if it is an empty cell), then drag the cell to end of your data. You may then introduce the @ to ignore whichever rows you seem fit. Alternatively, you can also only select the blank cells in the @ column of your excel sheet and do the delete-drag process so that you do not disturb the cells containing @ used to ignore rows within the data. 2. Remove the variable identifiers when you are outputting the data from R. You can do this by using the col.names=FALSE argument in the write.table function. Just be sure you are referencing the columns correctly in the $INPUT record in your control file. This option obviates the use of @ to ignore the row containing variable identifiers. However, this option will not work for you if you want to ignore specific rows within the data. Hope this helps. Eager to hear other responses to solve this problem. Thank you. Regards, VINEET GOTI Graduate Student, COP/Center for Pharmacometrics, Mercer University Atlanta. Phone: 678-547-6264 678-314-1893