R reading in data from a column but it isn't pure data, it has a "levels" separator

Question

I have a pretty standard table, usually when I do something like this to read in a column from the table it works fine, but for some reason this time it didn't.

x <- dataFile$columnName

Here is what I get:

[1] 61 71 83 55 44 78 57 46 41 36 45 48 38 33 54 62 60 44 70 49 57 86 41 71 59 52 51 62 45 43
54 Levels:  33-87    36-81    38-79    41-70    41-85    43-47    44-51    44-62    45-51   ... 43

I just want the top part, without all the levels in it.

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Edit (in preparation for this being closed): rather than leaving what is now misleading information in the comments (in case this shows up in someone's search), the top part is just a set of factor levels. If you just wanted those values (as text) you would use: as.character(x). If you wanted the characters before the minus sign if one were present, you could use:

  as.numeric( sub("\\-.+$", "", as.character(x) ) )

Using as.numeric(x) would generally return values from 1 to 54 and is meaningless unless you only want an index.

It's a big table so here's a link to it. [link](https://www.dropbox.com/s/81byetm90d8mffd/VermontwomensGameData.txt) — user2963379, Dec 02 '13 at 01:30
I don't think you should thank Maiasaura until you have tested the code. It probably did not do what you think it did. And now you should read the R-FAQ section 7. — IRTFM, Dec 02 '13 at 01:52
I only tested it once before I went to dinner but you're right, it doesn't solve my problem. — user2963379, Dec 02 '13 at 02:57
I tried using the as.character() above, it seems to give me the right numbers... However, I need these values to be integers for further calculations. — user2963379, Dec 02 '13 at 03:01
@user2963379 Please read that FAQ referenced above. Hint: `as.integer(as.character(factor))` — Matthew Lundberg, Dec 02 '13 at 03:02
Link to the R-FAQ [*7.10 How do I convert factors to numeric?*](http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#How-do-I-convert-factors-to-numeric_003f) — Blue Magister, Dec 02 '13 at 03:14

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 02 '13 at 04:50

from ?read.table

stringsAsFactors
logical: should character vectors be converted to factors? Note that this is overridden by as.is and colClasses, both of which allow finer control.

So set stringAsFactors = FALSE in the read.table command:

data <- read.table("C:/rk/R/problem.txt", sep="\t", fill = FALSE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

output for one column:

data$V21
 [1] "avg "   " 45.0 " " 45.5 " " 55.7 " " 58.2 " " 60.0 " " 60.2 " " 58.3 " " 58.4 " " 57.3 " " 55.7 " " 53.4 " " 52.5 " " 52.7 " " 53.4 " " 51.9 "
[17] " 52.6 " " 53.1 " " 53.1 " " 53.5 " " 52.4 " " 52.3 " " 52.0 " " 52.1 " " 51.9 " " 51.7 " " 52.1 " " 52.1 " " 52.4 " " 51.8 " " 51.6 " " 51.0"

There are no levels when stringAsFactors is set to FALSE.

R reading in data from a column but it isn't pure data, it has a "levels" separator

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1 Answers1