How to convert a character string to a number

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Dear Andreas,

Hi everyone,
I have a simple problem but don??t know how to solve it.
I read in a table from a text file that looks like that:

-3,932200E-01   -2,000000E-01   4,999995E-02
-3,932099E-01   -1,000000E-01   3,999996E-02
...
-3,931300E-01   0,000000E+00  3,499996E-02

but when I try to to plot the values from the
second column, the plot shows the wrong values.

That's what I do in R:
read.table("C:\\Messdaten\\epp1_1_ver.txt")->sh1

Read the help for read.table() and use dec = ",".

Also, before you correct the call to read.table, if you enter

R> str(sh1)

you'll see something like:

R> str(sh1)
`data.frame':	10 obs. of  3 variables:
  $ V1: Factor w/ 10 levels "-3,931300E-01",..: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
  $ V2: Factor w/ 5 levels "-1,000000E-01",..: 2 1 4 1 1 5 3 4 4 4
  $ V3: Factor w/ 5 levels "2,499996E-02",..: 5 3 3 4 4 2 3 1 1 2

which gives you some very helpful information.  In particular, it
shows that sh1 consists of factors.

Good luck,

Stephen
sh1[1:10,2]
 [1] -2.000000E-01 -1.000000E-01 0.000000E+00  -1.000000E-01 
-1.000000E-01 3.000000E-01  -3.000000E-01 0.000000E+00

 [9] 0.000000E+00  0.000000E+00

1707 Levels: -1,000000E-01 -1,000000E+00 -1,000000E+01 -1,002000E+02 
-1,003000E+02 -1,004000E+02 ... 9,980000E+01

sh1[1:10,2]->a

cbind(x=seq(1,10,by=1),y=a)
       x    y

 [1,]  1  436

 [2,]  2  321

 [3,]  3 1007

 [4,]  4  321

 [5,]  5  321

 [6,]  6 1353

 [7,]  7  548

 [8,]  8 1007

 [9,]  9 1007

[10,] 10 1007

Why do I get those values? Why is for example -2,000000E-01 equal to 
436?

I need to convert the values from -2,000000E-01 to -0.2  - how can I 
do this?

Thank you for your suggestions,

Andreas Kraft

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