Use readLines to read your data into Lines.in. Then delete percentages and right parens followed by replacing left parens followed by zero or more spaces with a minus. Then re-read using read.table.
Lines <- "4.61% ( 4.11%) 29.85% ( 1.27%) 16.04% 21.31% 14.09% 39.71% 4.61% ( 4.11%) 29.85% ( 1.27%) 16.04% 21.31% 14.09% 39.71%" # Lines.in <- readLines("myfile.dat") Lines.in <- readLines(textConnection(Lines)) Lines.in <- gsub("[%)]", "", Lines.in) Lines.in <- gsub("[(] *", "-", Lines.in) DF <- read.table(textConnection(Lines.in)) On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 8:02 PM, Young Cho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > I have an accounting data with "%" at the end and "()" for negative. > E.g. if I read in with read.table, then R reads in as a factor: > > [11625] 4.61% ( 4.11%) 29.85% ( 1.27%) 16.04% 21.31% 14.09% > 39.71% > [11633] 3.03% 17.39% 80.13% > 6648 Levels: ( 0.00%) ( 0.03%) ( 0.04%) ( 0.05%) ( 0.06%) ( 0.07%) ... > 99.70% > And I was wondering how to convert this column into numeric numbers in R? > > Thanks a lot! > > Young > > [[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. > ______________________________________________ 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.