Chars as numbers

Is there a proper function for transforming
a character to a number instead of using

   i=match('c',letters)
   # 3

Thanks.
Josef Eschgf??ller
Josef Eschgf??ller
Dipartimento Matematico
Universita' di Ferrara
http://felix.unife.it
Josef,

Not sure if this is exactly what you mean, but there is a generic function

as()

to which you can then specify "numeric" as an argument and which then 
coerces stuff into numeric format.

Tobias
Is there a proper function for transforming
a character to a number instead of using

  i=match('c',letters)
  # 3

Thanks.
Josef Eschgf??ller

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It just happened to be a 2000-step process."
as.numeric()
hih
Is there a proper function for transforming
a character to a number instead of using

  i=match('c',letters)
  # 3
I'd suggest to use the above if you really mean it. Note that 
"transforming a character to a number" is not well defined, because you 
have to think about encodings and characters at first. See the article 
by Brian Ripley in the most recent issue of R News, for example.

Uwe Ligges
Thanks.
Josef Eschgf??ller

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