[R] Assignment converts variable to factor

[Daniel Mastropietro]

Hello,

I would like to know if this behaviour in R is as expected.

I have a data frame 'dat' with column var1 being character (and not 
factor). Then I create a new column 'var2' by:

 > dat[,"var2"] <- dat$var1;

Column var2 is now a factor.

But if I do:

 > dat$var2 <- dat$var1;

Then column var2 is character (and not factor).

I don't want to have var2 as factor by doing the first assignment. I tried 
using 'as.character(dat$var1)' or converting dat[,"var2"] to character by 
using as.character() after the assignment, but still var2 is treated as factor.

Note that I want to use dat[,"var2"] and not dat$var2 because I am doing 
the assignment within a function by referencing column var2 with a variable 
whose value is "var2" (e.g. dat[,col2] <- dat$var1, where col2 = "var2"). 
It is easier and more clear to use the [] operator to reference a data 
frame column with a variable, rather than using the $ operator with the 
parse() function.

Thanks
Daniel Mastropietro
	

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