R read.csv how NOT to convert numbers into numerical values but keep them as strings

Asked Nov 10 '15 at 18:38

Active Nov 10 '15 at 18:38

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I have a CSV file with all values in double quotes. One column is the id column and it contains values such as this:

01100170109835

The problem I am having is that no matter what options I specify (as.is=T, stringsAsFactors=F, or numerals='no.loss'), it always reads this id column in as numeric and drops the leading 0's. This is such a fundamental operation that I am really baffled that I can't find a solution.

asked Nov 10 '15 at 18:38

breezymri

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Is there a way you could reproduce the problem? – Ronak Shah Nov 10 '15 at 18:39
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You could try the `colClasses` argument in `read.csv`. Something like `read.csv("myfile.csv", colClasses = "character")` – jeremycg Nov 10 '15 at 18:40
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Have you tried using `colClasses` to specify the variable types? It takes a vector that needs to be the same length as `ncol` in the data frame you're creating. – ulfelder Nov 10 '15 at 18:40
@jeremycg and ulfelder: thanks for the tip. That solves it. – breezymri Nov 10 '15 at 18:45

R read.csv how NOT to convert numbers into numerical values but keep them as strings

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