Hi, May be this helps: dat1<- read.table(text=" 142,QUANTIZE_CAL_MIN_BAND_10,1 143,QUANTIZE_CAL_MAX_BAND_11,65535 144,QUANTIZE_CAL_MIN_BAND_11,1 145,END_GROUP,MIN_MAX_PIXEL_VALUE 146,GROUP,RADIOMETRIC_RESCALING 147,RADIANCE_MULT_BAND_1,1.2483E-02 148,RADIANCE_MULT_BAND_2,1.2730E-02 ",sep=",",header=FALSE,stringsAsFactors=FALSE,row.names=1) #Assuming that 142, 143, etc are row.names. #You could create a new column with just the numeric values leaving the strings in the 2nd column. dat1$NewCol<-as.numeric(ifelse(grepl("\\d+",dat1[,2]),dat1[,2],NA)) dat1[,2][grepl("\\d+",dat1[,2])]<-NA dat1 #????????????????????????? V2??????????????????? V3???? NewCol #142 QUANTIZE_CAL_MIN_BAND_10????????????????? <NA> 1.0000e+00 #143 QUANTIZE_CAL_MAX_BAND_11????????????????? <NA> 6.5535e+04 #144 QUANTIZE_CAL_MIN_BAND_11????????????????? <NA> 1.0000e+00 #145??????????????? END_GROUP?? MIN_MAX_PIXEL_VALUE???????? NA #146??????????????????? GROUP RADIOMETRIC_RESCALING???????? NA #147???? RADIANCE_MULT_BAND_1????????????????? <NA> 1.2483e-02 #148???? RADIANCE_MULT_BAND_2????????????????? <NA> 1.2730e-02 ?str(dat1) #'data.frame':??? 7 obs. of? 3 variables: # $ V2??? : chr? "QUANTIZE_CAL_MIN_BAND_10" "QUANTIZE_CAL_MAX_BAND_11" "QUANTIZE_CAL_MIN_BAND_11" "END_GROUP" ... # $ V3??? : chr? NA NA NA "MIN_MAX_PIXEL_VALUE" ... # $ NewCol: num? 1 65535 1 NA NA ... A.K. Hello, I am relatively new to the R community. I have a .txt file containing the metafile with informations regarding landsat calibration parameters. This contains 2 columns: one with the description of the parameter and the other one with the value of the parameter. The problem is that the column with the values contains also words in some cases, which I believe makes the read.table() read the column not as a numeric value. This is an example of how it looks like: 142 ? ? ? ? ? QUANTIZE_CAL_MIN_BAND_10 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?1 142 143 ? ? ? ? ? QUANTIZE_CAL_MAX_BAND_11 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?65535 143 144 ? ? ? ? ? QUANTIZE_CAL_MIN_BAND_11 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?1 144 145 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?END_GROUP ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?MIN_MAX_PIXEL_VALUE 145 146 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?GROUP ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?RADIOMETRIC_RESCALING 146 147 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? RADIANCE_MULT_BAND_1 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1.2483E-02 147 148 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? RADIANCE_MULT_BAND_2 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1.2730E-02 148 149 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? RADIANCE_MULT_BAND_3 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 1.1656E-02 149 I need the left column to be read as numeric, does anyone have some good suggestion on how to approach this problem? Thank you in advance. Stefano