Data frame values get integer values instead of text

Question

Here is my data:

require(HH)
data(ProfChal)
rowsCount = length(ProfChal$Question)
ProfChal$NEW = character(rowsCount)

It looks like this:

When I run this loop:

for (r in 1:rowsCount){
  ProfChal[r,"NEW"] = ProfChal[r,"Subtable"]
}

the new column has integers in it:

I would like to have text values instead of integers. Debugging it leaves me confused...

ProfChal[2,"Subtable"] returns [1] Employment sector.
ProfChal[1,"NEW"] = "asdf" works as expected.

I know about df$TargetCol <- df$SourceCol, but originally, I don't want it. I created this example loop just for simplicity. — ZygD
– ZygD, Commented Apr 10, 2019 at 7:10
And yet, accepted answer is doing exactly what you are doing in your comment, but with as.character around it. — zx8754
– zx8754, Commented Apr 10, 2019 at 8:24
@zx8754 - Because of the answer, I have applied as.character on elements in my loop, not on full column, which was not possible using aforementioned syntax. — ZygD
– ZygD, Commented Apr 10, 2019 at 9:41

ZygD · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-10 07:24:11Z

2

The problem is that the column Subtable is stored as a factor not as character. You can check this by typing class(ProfChal[ ,"Subtable"]).

You can convert this column to character using as.character:

ProfChal[, "NEW"] = as.character(ProfChal[, "Subtable"])

Note also, that you do not need a for loop in this example.

ZygD

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answered Apr 10, 2019 at 7:14

Cettt

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