Massaging (a folder full of) NPC xls files into a manageable localities subset

gistfile1.txt

setwd("~/Dropbox/FINAL CONPEDIUM OF LOCALITIES/")
require(gdata)

l <- list.files()
l <- l[which(str_detect(l, "\\.xls"))]

listofdfs <- llply(l, function(fname) {
  print(paste("Reading file:", fname))
  tryCatch({
    d <- read.xls(fname)
    feat_type_col <- names(d)[str_detect(names(d), "FEATURE.*TYPE")]
    subset(d, 
           d[,feat_type_col]=='Locality', select=names(d)[which(str_detect(names(d), 'U.E'))])
  }, warning = function(w) {
    NA
  }, error = function(e) {
    print(paste("FAILED ON:", fname))
    NA
  })
})

# TO CHECK WHAT WAS a problem:
# ll[c(which(unlist(llply(lens, is.null))), 14)]

md <- 
  ldply(listofdfs, function(df) {
    if (!is.data.frame(df)) data.frame() else 
    names(df)[which(str_detect(names(df), "L.NG"))] <- "LONG"
    names(df)[which(str_detect(names(df), "LAT"))] <- "LAT"
    names(df)[which(str_detect(names(df), "FEATURE.*NAME"))] <- "FEATURE_NAME"
    names(df)[which(str_detect(names(df), "FEATURE.*TYPE"))] <- "FEATURE_TYPE"
    df
  })