[R] numerical accuracy, dumb question

[Brian Gough]

Dan Bolser <dmb at mrc-dunn.cam.ac.uk> writes:

> I store an id as a big number, could this be a problem?

If there are ids with significant leading zeros, or too big to be
represented accurately (>2^53)--you won't get any warning about it,
just silent truncation.  So best practice would be to keep them as
character strings, using colClasses= in read.table().

-- 
Brian Gough

Network Theory Ltd,
Publishing the R Reference Manuals --- http://www.network-theory.co.uk/R/base/