title: How to merge multiple data sets and append comments to a new variable
body: <p>I have multiple data sets (hundreds) with time series data like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>"File name";"18%MC001.TXT";"V 1.24"
  "Title comment";"231020124070"
  "Trigger Time";"'13-04-05 13:53:51"
  "Ch";"A 1- 1";"A 1- 2";"A 1- 3";"A 1- 4";"A 1- 5";"A 1- 6";"A 1- 7";"A 1- 8";"A 1- 9";"A 1-10";"A 1-11";"A 1-12";"A 1-13";"A 1-14";"A 1-15";"A 2- 1";"A 2- 2";"A 2- 4";
  "Mode";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";"Voltage";
  "Range";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";"10V";
  "Comment";"Prove1";"Prove1";"Prove2";"Prove2";"Prove3";"Prove3";"Prove4";"Prove4";"Prove5";"Prove5";"Prove6";"Prove6";"Prove7";"Prove7";"Prove8";"Prove8";"Prove9";"Prove9";
  "Scaling";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";"Off";
  "Ratio";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";" 1.00000E+00";
  "Offset";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";" 0.00000E+00";"-3.00000E+00";"-3.00000E+00";
  "Time";"1-1[V]";"1-2[V]";"1-3[V]";"1-4[V]";"1-5[V]";"1-6[V]";"1-7[V]";"1-8[V]";"1-9[V]";"1-10[V]";"1-11[V]";"1-12[V]";"1-13[V]";"1-14[V]";"1-15[V]";"2-1[V]";"2-2[V]";"2-4[V]";"Event";
   0,000000000E+00; 8,69500E-01; 4,80350E+00; 3,76000E-01; 7,34950E+00; 5,60750E+00; 4,66450E+00; 8,31600E+00; 8,13950E+00; 6,66050E+00; 9,69700E+00; 1,81750E+00; 1,10900E+00; 6,82400E+00; 4,04900E+00; 9,82150E+00; 6,98000E+00; 2,94750E+00; 4,08750E+00;0;
   1,000000000E+01; 8,69500E-01; 4,80350E+00; 3,76000E-01; 7,34950E+00; 5,60750E+00; 4,66500E+00; 8,31600E+00; 8,13950E+00; 6,66050E+00; 9,69700E+00; 1,81700E+00; 1,10900E+00; 6,82400E+00; 4,04900E+00; 9,82150E+00; 6,98000E+00; 2,94750E+00; 4,08800E+00;0;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Each data set has a unique datetime value (<code>Trigger Time</code>) that is treated as a comment. Each data set also has a <code>Time</code> variable indicating the time that has passed since the datetime in <code>Trigger Time</code>. What I want to do is calculate the datetime for each observation so that I can graph the data as a time series using <strong>R</strong> Statistics. Is there a way to accomplish this? Merging the datasets and appending the comments does not necessarily have to be done in <strong>R</strong>. </p>
  
  <p>I have imported the data from all files in <strong>R</strong> Statistics using the <code>list.files</code> and <code>llply</code> functions, <a href="http://econometricsense.blogspot.no/2011/01/merging-multiple-data-frames-in-r.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">as suggested by Matt Bogard in this blog post</a>. Here is a <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/616262/data-test.zip" rel="nofollow noreferrer">link</a> to the data sets I use in the example below. </p>
  
  <pre><code>require(plyr)
  filenames &lt;- list.files(path = "C:/Users/bys/Desktop/log-trykk-vinkelrett/data-test/", full.names = TRUE)
  import.list &lt;- llply(filenames, read.csv)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here is a <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/616262/importlist.txt" rel="nofollow noreferrer">link the output from <code>import.list</code></a> using <code>dput</code>.</p>
  
  <p>I think I then need to do something similar to what <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1562124/merge-many-data-frames-from-csv-files">learnr is suggesting here</a>, but so far my attempts at extracting <code>Trigger Time</code> and adding a new variable with <code>Trigger Time</code> for each observation have been unsuccessful.</p>
  
  <p>Solving the problem with Open Refine causes the program to crash every time I try to load all the data sets. <strong>R</strong> may not be the best tool for processing text files, but I don't have any experience with Python, Ruby or similar languages. </p>