factor issue

Hi,

I have a column which I have to convert from factors to numeric. I am using
the command as.numeric(variable) to do this. But when I convert the numeric
value becomes different from factor . for example.

class(B)

[1] "factor"

B

 [1] 180  <NA> 183  175  163  155  <NA> 188  191  160  170  165  152  170
165
[16] 163  160  163  165  <NA>

as.numeric(B)

 [1] 46 NA 47 42 30 26 NA 49 50 29 37 32 24 37 32 30 29 30 32 NA
Is there a different way to convert factor to respective number ?


also when i try to unclass it i get following output

unclass(B)

 [1] 46 NA 47 42 30 26 NA 49 50 29 37 32 24 37 32 30 29 30 32 NA
attr(,"levels")
 [1] "102" "104" "107" "109" "110" "112" "114" "117" "119" "122" "124" "125"
[13] "127" "129" "130" "132" "135" "137" "140" "142" "145" "147" "150" "152"
[25] "153" "155" "157" "159" "160" "163" "164" "165" "166" "167" "168" "169"
[37] "170" "171" "172" "173" "174" "175" "177" "178" "179" "180" "183" "185"
[49] "188" "191" "193" "196" "198" "201" "203" "211" "46"  "48"  "51"  "56"
[61] "58"  "60"  "61"  "63"  "64"  "65"  "66"  "69"  "71"  "74"  "76"  "79"
[73] "81"  "84"  "86"  "89"  "91"  "94"  "97"  "99"  "U"

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks a lot.
Regards,
Nataraju
GM