An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: <https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/attachments/20101221/dd60a7be/attachment.pl>
Keeping Leading Zeros, Treating numbers as text
5 messages · James Splinter, Bert Gunter, David L Lorenz +2 more
Try reading the csv file with, say, Notepad. I think you may find that the problem is that Excel assumes the column is numeric and strips off the zeros before saving the file. So you need to tell it that the ID columns are character before saving. Then you need to read the Help page for read.csv more carefully, noting, in particular, the "colClasses" argument. -- Bert On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:43 PM, James Splinter
<james.r.splinter at gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I have a data set, with some numerical values, some non-numerical data, my
issue is that I need to preserve my ID numbers (numerics) with the leading
zeros, but when I import the data into R (it's in .csv format) using the
read.csv(" ") command, it turns all the ID numbers (Example: 00210) into
numbers, removing the leading zeros, so I end up with 210. I tried using the
"as.is=" command on the column that I wanted to treat as text, but it had no
effect.
Any help would be very much appreciated,
Thanks,
James
? ? ? ?[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
______________________________________________ R-help at r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics 467-7374 http://devo.gene.com/groups/devo/depts/ncb/home.shtml
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: <https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/attachments/20101221/74d745da/attachment.pl>
On Dec 21, 2010, at 4:11 PM, Bert Gunter wrote:
Try reading the csv file with, say, Notepad. I think you may find that the problem is that Excel assumes the column is numeric and strips off the zeros before saving the file. So you need to tell it that the ID columns are character before saving.
If Excel turns out to be the culprit, there is an equivalent operation to the colClasses specification which you can do to prevent leading zeros from being dropped. Select the entire column by clicking on the column letter at the top margin of the sheet and then choose Format/ Cells/... and pick "Text". The same sort of preparation can also save you grief with Date types in Excel or OO.org.
Then you need to read the Help page for read.csv more carefully, noting, in particular, the "colClasses" argument. -- Bert On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:43 PM, James Splinter <james.r.splinter at gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I have a data set, with some numerical values, some non-numerical
data, my
issue is that I need to preserve my ID numbers (numerics) with the
leading
zeros, but when I import the data into R (it's in .csv format)
using the
read.csv(" ") command, it turns all the ID numbers (Example: 00210)
into
numbers, removing the leading zeros, so I end up with 210. I tried
using the
"as.is=" command on the column that I wanted to treat as text, but
it had no
effect.
Any help would be very much appreciated,
Thanks,
James
-- Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics 467-7374 http://devo.gene.com/groups/devo/depts/ncb/home.shtml
David Winsemius, MD West Hartford, CT
Use the colClasses argument with a vector of character strings naming the types you want each column to have, and specify "character" for your id column.
"James Splinter" <james.r.splinter at gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
I have a data set, with some numerical values, some non-numerical data,
my
issue is that I need to preserve my ID numbers (numerics) with the
leading
zeros, but when I import the data into R (it's in .csv format) using
the
read.csv(" ") command, it turns all the ID numbers (Example: 00210)
into
numbers, removing the leading zeros, so I end up with 210. I tried
using the
"as.is=" command on the column that I wanted to treat as text, but it
had no
effect.
Any help would be very much appreciated,
Thanks,
James
[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
______________________________________________ R-help at r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Newmiller The ..... ..... Go Live...
DCN:<jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us> Basics: ##.#. ##.#. Live Go...
Live: OO#.. Dead: OO#.. Playing
Research Engineer (Solar/Batteries O.O#. #.O#. with
/Software/Embedded Controllers) .OO#. .OO#. rocks...1k
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.