I have uploaded the property data from Lee County Property Appraiser into R, but my problem is that I am unable manipulate and use many of the columns because they are classified as factors. I think this is because the values represent selling prices and therefore have $ in front of them. I tried using as.integer but this funtion converts the values into a totaly useless form. Is there a way to convert these columns from factors into something usefull for plotting and graphing such as integer form? Thanks Will -- View this message in context: http://n4.nabble.com/Need-Help-with-Manipulating-Columns-tp1753364p1753364.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
possible hint:
as.numeric(gsub("\\$", "", c("$1.23",
"$1.32")))
cavalier33901 wrote:> I have uploaded the property data from Lee County Property Appraiser into
R,
> but my problem is that I am unable manipulate and use many of the columns
> because they are classified as factors. I think this is because the values
> represent selling prices and therefore have $ in front of them. I tried
> using as.integer but this funtion converts the values into a totaly useless
> form. Is there a way to convert these columns from factors into something
> usefull for plotting and graphing such as integer form? Thanks
>
> Will
On 06/04/2010 3:40 PM, cavalier33901 wrote:> I have uploaded the property data from Lee County Property Appraiser into R, > but my problem is that I am unable manipulate and use many of the columns > because they are classified as factors. I think this is because the values > represent selling prices and therefore have $ in front of them. I tried > using as.integer but this funtion converts the values into a totaly useless > form. Is there a way to convert these columns from factors into something > usefull for plotting and graphing such as integer form? ThanksUse stringsAsFactors=FALSE when you read the data, and they'll be left as strings, not factors. Then convert them by stripping off the non-numeric bits and using as.numeric. For example: > price <- " $123,456" > price <- gsub(",", "", price) # remove comma > price <- gsub("^[[:blank:]]*", "", price) # remove leading whitespace > price <- gsub("\\$", "", price) # remove dollar sign > > price [1] 123456 Duncan Murdoch
Erik Iverson wrote:> possible hint: > > as.numeric(gsub("\\$", "", c("$1.23", "$1.32")))and convert to character first before as.numeric if they were factors to begin with...> > cavalier33901 wrote: >> I have uploaded the property data from Lee County Property Appraiser >> into R, >> but my problem is that I am unable manipulate and use many of the columns >> because they are classified as factors. I think this is because the >> values >> represent selling prices and therefore have $ in front of them. I tried >> using as.integer but this funtion converts the values into a totaly >> useless >> form. Is there a way to convert these columns from factors into >> something >> usefull for plotting and graphing such as integer form? Thanks >> Will > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.