Change numeric format in R

Question

How can I change the value 20,000 to 20000 in R? In my case, I have a CSV file where column A is a value with format xx,xxx and column B is a group name.

So

data[,1]
[1] 203,472.40 226,433.70 ...
100 Levels: 101,051.40 103,662.70 ...

The numerical value is a factor instead of numeric.

I to convert data[,1] to

[1] 203472.40 226433.70 ...

I've tried as.numeric, but this doesn't work with factors.

when reading the data, you can set dec=",", which will read data as numeric values (comma will separate decimals) and then you can multiple them by 1000 to get the correct values — Zbynek
– Zbynek, Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 9:16
cant use as.numeric as the data is in level. @Zbynek where i should put dec=","? Thanks — useR
– useR, Commented Feb 24, 2014 at 9:23

csgillespie · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-24 09:26:06Z

2

To answer your question, you need to:

Convert the factor to character - as.character
Remove the comma - gsub
Convert to numeric - as.numeric

So

x = factor(c("203,472.40","226,433.70"))
as.numeric(gsub(",", "", as.character(x)))

Of course, you should try and fix the problem (if possible) up-stream, i.e. using dec in read.csv

answered Feb 24, 2014 at 9:26

csgillespie

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1 Comment

useR Over a year ago

Thanks for your help it do exactly what i need. <br/> while i tried data<-read.csv("rev3.csv","dec=","). It do not work. Maybe it is because i got two attributes that another one besides value is a character "Name".

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