Data type in a data frame
Hello,
When read into a data.frame, R defaults to reading character strings as
factors. If you don't want that, use option stringsAsFactors = FALSE.
Using your dataset,
dat1 <- read.table(text = "
Observation Gender Dosage Alertness
1 m a 8
2 m a 12
3 m a 13
4 m a 12
5 m b 6
6 m b 7
", header = TRUE)
str(dat2)
dat2 <- read.table(text = "
Observation Gender Dosage Alertness
1 m a 8
2 m a 12
3 m a 13
4 m a 12
5 m b 6
6 m b 7
", header = TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
str(dat2)
This is decided based on the setting of (which you can change)
options("stringsAsFactors")
Hope this helps,
Rui Barradas
Em 23-10-2012 15:43, asafwe escreveu:
Hi all, How does R know to regard a variable as a factor and not a character? For example, consider the following table: Observation Gender Dosage Alertness 1 m a 8 2 m a 12 3 m a 13 4 m a 12 5 m b 6 6 m b 7 When read into a dataframe, will "m", "a", "b" be regarded as a factor or as a character? How does R decide? Thanks a lot in advance, Asaf -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Data-type-in-a-data-frame-tp4647161.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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