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.
______________________________________________
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.
______________________________________________
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.
