It seems that your original data has NA values in it (which you should have said in your original post) and that's where they are coming from in tmp. E.g.,
R> NA == "null" [1] NA To identify them, you need to use is.na() rather than "==NA" E.g., tmp[is.na(tmp)] <- "norecurrence" and similarly elsewhere. If this doesn't work, please provide your actual data (or a representative sample thereof) -- it's pretty hard to diagnose without being able to look at the patient. Generally, for testing for NA or NULL values, you have to use is.na() and is.null() as I noted in my first reply. Hope this helps, Michael Weylandt On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Ben Ganzfried <ben.ganzfr...@gmail.com>wrote: > Hi Michael, > > I mean the character string "null". > > Thanks, > > Ben > > > On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 10:40 AM, R. Michael Weylandt < > michael.weyla...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Do you actually mean the character string "null" or do you mean the NULL >> it doesn't exist thing? If that's the case, you need to write is.null(), >> something like is.NA()... >> >> Michael Weylandt >> >> On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 10:36 AM, Ben Ganzfried >> <ben.ganzfr...@gmail.com>wrote: >> >>> Hi guys, >>> >>> My code (next 2 lines below) isn't doing what I'm expecting it to: >>> >>> tmp <- >>> >>> ifelse(uncurated$days_to_tumor_recurrence=="null","norecurrence","recurrence") >>> curated$recurrence_status <- tmp >>> >>> I want the column "recurrence_status" in my output file to have values >>> "recurrence" (if the input value had a number in the >>> days_to_tumor_recurrence column for the particular patient) or >>> "norecurrence" (if the input value said "null" in the >>> days_to_tumor_recurrence column for the particular patient). >>> >>> Part of my above code gives me what I want. My current output file does >>> indeed get "recurrence" everywhere it should say this. But for the input >>> values of "null" I am getting output values of NA instead of >>> "norecurrence." I tried the following strategies to solve this and was >>> unsuccessful. >>> >>> First, I added a line in the middle of the two above lines of code, with >>> the >>> following: >>> tmp[tmp==NA] <- "norecurrence" >>> >>> This did not work. >>> >>> Second, I changed the first line of my code to: >>> tmp <- >>> >>> ifelse(uncurated$days_to_tumor_recurrence==NA,"norecurrence","recurrence") >>> >>> This was worse, as was trying: >>> >>> tmp <- >>> >>> ifelse(uncurated$days_to_tumor_recurrence=="NA","norecurrence","recurrence") >>> >>> I would greatly appreciate any advice you may have. Also, why is this >>> happening? >>> >>> Thanks a bunch, >>> >>> Ben >>> >>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] >>> >>> ______________________________________________ >>> R-help@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. >>> >> >> > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@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.
