[R] convert factor to numeric in bulk

arun
2013-12-05T22:11:11Z

Hi,
colnames(x1) <- gsub("NULL\\.","",colnames(x1)) ##not
needed.


A.K.


On Thursday, December 5, 2013 5:04 PM, arun <smartpink111 at yahoo.com>
wrote:
Hi,
Try:
library(XML)
x1 <-
readHTMLTable('http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/15SNAPpartPP.htm',skip.rows=c(1:2,4,58:60),colClasses=c("character",rep("FormattedNumber",5)),stringsAsFactors=FALSE)[[1]]
colnames(x1) <- gsub("NULL\\.","",colnames(x1))
?str(x1)
#'data.frame':??? 53 obs. of? 6 variables:
# $ State/Territory: chr? "Alabama" "Alaska"
"Arizona" "Arkansas" ...
# $ FY 2008??????? : num? 571591 56977 627660 377883 2220127 ...
# $ FY 2009??????? : num? 679138 64385 813987 411153 2670341 ...
# $ FY 2010??????? : num? 805095 76445 1018171 466598 3238548 ...
# $ FY 2011??????? : num? 920365 86044 1067617 486451 3672980 ...
# $ FY 2012??????? : num? 910244 91298 1123974 502125 3964221 ...

A.K.

Hello I am trying to import a html table as data.frame and the columns
come in as factors. I need to convert them to numeric, which I can do
but when I use the single method it would take long and converting them
to matrix trims the numbers. ?Can someone explain how to convert all the
numbers in columns 2:6 into numerics that hold up the right numeric
length?

nms = c("State/Territory" , "FY 2008" ?,"FY
2009",??? "FY 2010",??? "FY 2011",??? "FY
2012")
x <-
data.frame(readHTMLTable('http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/15SNAPpartPP.htm'),
stringsAsFactors = F)
x <- x[5:57,]
names(x) <- nms
snap.partpp <- x
# this is what i have tried to do to solve this problem but it does the
conversion but changes the values of the numbers

x <-
data.frame(readHTMLTable('http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/15SNAPpartPP.htm'),
stringsAsFactors = F)
y <- x[5:57, 1]
x <- data.matrix(x[5:57,2:6])
xy <- data.frame(y, x)
names(xy) <- nms
snap.avghh <- xy