Gdata package perl issue

Question

I am attempting to follow this easy 2-minute video tutorial on importing an Excel spreadsheet into R as a data frame: http://www.screenr.com/QiN8

I followed each step, i

Answer 1

After loading the gdata package using library(gdata) it clearly says:

gdata: read.xls() will be unable to read Excel XLS and XLSX files gdata: unless the 'perl=' argument is used to specify the location of a gdata: valid perl intrpreter.

So, you need the PATH to the valid perl interpreter. Using windows, as is the case here, you need to check the properties to locate the required perl interpreter.

#set the PATH to perl interpreter
perl <- "C:/strawberry/perl/bin/perl5.18.2.exe"

try1file <- read.xls("my.one.filename.xls", perl = perl)

For multiple xls files:

> length(list.files())
[1] 65

try65files <- lapply(list.files(), ..., perl = perl) 

If verbose = TRUE, at the end of each file it will read:

Loading 'F65.xls'...
Done.
Orignal Filename: F65.xls
Number of Sheets: 1
Writing sheet number 1 ('Sheet1') to file 'C:\Users\FRANKL~1.JOH\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpeKs3fi\file13dc750950e4.csv'
Minrow=0 Maxrow=32 Mincol=0 Maxcol=16
  (Ignored 0 blank lines.)
0 
Done.
Reading csv file  “C:\Users\FRANKL~1.JOH\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpeKs3fi\file13dc750950e4.csv” ...
Done.