diff --git a/.Rbuildignore b/.Rbuildignore
index 8dcb390..2323492 100644
--- a/.Rbuildignore
+++ b/.Rbuildignore
@@ -4,3 +4,6 @@
 README.html
 README.Rmd
 ^cran-comments\.md$
+
+cran-comments.md
+params.Rproj
diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index fae6553..206a5da 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ Title: Simplify Parameters
 Description: An interface to simplify organizing parameters used in a package,
     using external configuration files. This attempts to provide a cleaner
     alternative to options().
-Version: 0.5.0
+Version: 0.6.1
 Depends:
     R (>= 3.0.2),
     whisker
@@ -20,4 +20,4 @@ Authors@R: c(
 		)
 URL: https://github.com/sahilseth/params
 BugReports: https://github.com/sahilseth/params/issues
-RoxygenNote: 5.0.1.9000
+RoxygenNote: 5.0.1
diff --git a/NAMESPACE b/NAMESPACE
index 5aa44a7..1ae6ab2 100644
--- a/NAMESPACE
+++ b/NAMESPACE
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ S3method(print,knitr_kable)
 S3method(print,opts)
 export(.load_opts)
 export(check_args)
+export(fix_names)
 export(get_opts)
 export(kable)
 export(load_opts)
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 8849ee3..529ccfa 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,12 +1,16 @@
+p a r a m s    0.6.0
+------------------------------------------------
+- `read_sheet`, now recognizes `.mat` as a tsv
+
 p a r a m s    0.5.0
 ------------------------------------------------
-- get_opts output is fully compatible with getOption
+- `get_opts` output is fully compatible with getOption
 - output is a un-named vector, for variable length = 1
 
 p a r a m s    0.4.0
 ------------------------------------------------
 - updated documentation for read_sheet
-- write_sheet now handles multiple extensions
+- `write_sheet` now handles multiple extensions
 
 p a r a m s    0.3.0    2015/09/22
 ------------------------------------------------
diff --git a/R/fix-names.R b/R/fix-names.R
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d55a85e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/R/fix-names.R
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+#' fix_names
+#'
+#' Replace special characters in column names of a data.frame
+#'
+#' @param x a vector of column names
+#' @param char substitute special char with this.
+#'
+#' @export
+#'
+#' @seealso make.names
+#'
+fix_names <- function (x, char = "."){
+
+	y <- gsub("_", char, as.character(x))
+	y <- gsub(" ", char, as.character(y))
+	y <- gsub("\\.", char, as.character(y))
+
+	return(y)
+}
diff --git a/R/read-sheet.R b/R/read-sheet.R
index a071c6c..6f04e1e 100644
--- a/R/read-sheet.R
+++ b/R/read-sheet.R
@@ -93,7 +93,7 @@ read_sheet <- function(x, id_column, start_row = 1, sheet = 1, ext, header=TRUE,
 		mat = mat[,!grepl("^X", colnames(mat))]
 
 	}else{
-		stop("Sorry read_shet does not recognize this file format: ", ext, " please use tsv, csv or xlsx (sheetname: sample_sheet)")
+		stop("Sorry read_sheet does not recognize this file format: ", ext, " please use tsv, csv or xlsx (sheetname: sample_sheet)")
 	}
 
 	### ------ remove blank rows and columns
diff --git a/R/write-sheet.R b/R/write-sheet.R
index 4c87a83..6ba5142 100644
--- a/R/write-sheet.R
+++ b/R/write-sheet.R
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ write_sheet <- function(x, file, ext, ...){
 
 	dir.create(dirname(file), recursive = TRUE, showWarnings=FALSE)
 
-	if(ext %in% c("tsv", "txt", "conf", "def")){
+	if(ext %in% c("tsv", "txt", "conf", "def", "mat")){
 		write.table(x = x, file = file, sep = "\t", row.names = FALSE, quote = FALSE, ...)
 
 	}else if(ext=="csv"){
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 844b36a..d59440b 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,6 +1,10 @@
 
+p a r a m s
+------------------
+
+
 [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/sahilseth/params.svg)](https://travis-ci.org/sahilseth/params)
-[![](http://www.r-pkg.org/badges/version/params)](http://cran.rstudio.com/web/packages/params/index.html)
+[![](http://www.r-pkg.org/badges/version/params)](https://cran.r-project.org/package=params)
 ![](http://cranlogs.r-pkg.org/badges/grand-total/params)
 
 **[sahilseth.github.io/params](http://sahilseth.github.io/params)**
diff --git a/cran-comments.md b/cran-comments.md
index 26aaa59..80105fb 100644
--- a/cran-comments.md
+++ b/cran-comments.md
@@ -1,7 +1,8 @@
 ## Test environments
-* local OS X install, R 3.2.2
-* ubuntu 12.04 (on travis-ci), R 3.2.2
+* local OS X install, R 3.2.4
+* ubuntu 12.04 (on travis-ci), R 3.2.4
 * win-builder (release)
+* Rdevel version using rocker/r-devel
 
 
 ## Downstream dependencies
@@ -10,7 +11,11 @@
 of params.
 
 
+<!---notes to self:
+
 ## checklist for self
-- check rerevdep_check()
+- check revdep_check()
 - version in DESCRIPTION (3)
 - update NEWS
+
+--->
diff --git a/man/fix_names.Rd b/man/fix_names.Rd
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26a5a22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/man/fix_names.Rd
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+% Generated by roxygen2: do not edit by hand
+% Please edit documentation in R/fix-names.R
+\name{fix_names}
+\alias{fix_names}
+\title{fix_names}
+\usage{
+fix_names(x, char = ".")
+}
+\arguments{
+\item{x}{a vector of column names}
+
+\item{char}{substitute special char with this.}
+}
+\description{
+Replace special characters in column names of a data.frame
+}
+\seealso{
+make.names
+}
+