R help - Aug 2008 - I need to change from character to numeric?

Hi,

I am reading numeric data as below but the problem is the object ndata1 and
nd1 have characters instead of numeric values. I want to keep it as numeric.
Why the type has changed from numeric to character and how to avoid this
problem?



rdata1<- read.table(file="data1.txt",
header=F,stringsAsFactors=F)
>rdata1
  V1
1 d1
2 11
3 20
4 13
rdata2
  V1
1 d2
2  1
3  7
4  5
5  6
>ndata1<-rdata1[2:nrow(rdata1),]
> ndata1
[1] "11" "20" "13"
>nd1<-cbind(ndata1,v2=0)
> nd1
     ndata1 v2 
[1,] "11"   "0"
[2,] "20"   "0"
[3,] "13"   "0"

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Hi

r-help-bounces at r-project.org napsal dne 28.08.2008 02:55:34:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am reading numeric data as below but the problem is the object ndata1 
and
> nd1 have characters instead of numeric values. I want to keep it as 
numeric.
> Why the type has changed from numeric to character and how to avoid this
> problem?
> 
> 
> 
> rdata1<- read.table(file="data1.txt",
header=F,stringsAsFactors=F)
Read your data properly. They obviously have header so why you use header 
= F.

rdata1<- read.table(file="data1.txt", header=T, stringsAsFactors=F)

shall read it as numeric if you do not have some non numeric values 
somwhere.

Regards
Petr
> >rdata1
>   V1
> 1 d1
> 2 11
> 3 20
> 4 13
> rdata2
>   V1
> 1 d2
> 2  1
> 3  7
> 4  5
> 5  6
> >ndata1<-rdata1[2:nrow(rdata1),]
> > ndata1
> [1] "11" "20" "13"
> >nd1<-cbind(ndata1,v2=0)
> > nd1
>      ndata1 v2 
> [1,] "11"   "0"
> [2,] "20"   "0"
> [3,] "13"   "0"
> 
> -- 
> View this message in context: 
http://www.nabble.com/I-need-to-change-from-
> character-to-numeric--tp19192541p19192541.html
> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> 
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide 
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> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

>  I am reading numeric data as below but the problem is the object
>  ndata1 and nd1 have characters instead of numeric values. I want to
>  keep it as numeric. Why the type has changed from numeric to
>  character and how to avoid this problem?
help(as.numeric)

Your variable rdata1 has probably character-type.

s.