[R] Write.table: change points to commas when object contains a row of characters

[Prof Brian Ripley]

You cannot have a matrix or a data frame which is partially numeric and 
partially character (within a column for a data frame).  You seem rather 
to have a list matrix.  Then ?write.table does say

      Any columns in a data frame which are lists or have a class (e.g.
      dates) will be converted by the appropriate 'as.character' method:
      such columns are unquoted by default.  On the other hand, any
      class information for a matrix is discarded.

Although it does not say so, the same happens with a matrix.

You need to get a table before you try outputting it: I suggest using 
format() to help you.

On Wed, 1 Feb 2006, Michael Reinecke wrote:

> Dear Group! I asked write.table to change the decimal point from "." to
> "," , but apparently it would only do so if the object to be written
> does not contain any character elements. I would like to understand, why
> this has to be so and - of course - find a solution for my matrix object
> jjmat, that I tried to write out by
>
>
>
> write.table(jjmat, file="jjmat.txt", row.names=TRUE,
> col.names=NA,sep="\t",dec=",")
>
>
>
> I also tried "options(OutDec=",")" , which changes the presentation on
> the console, but seems to have no influence on write table: jjmat is
> still written out with points instead of commas.
>
>
>
> The object looks like this:
>
>
>
>> jjmat
>
>         f2a1       f2b1       f5a1       f5b1       f5c1
>
> rowname1 "coltext1" "coltext2" "coltext3" "coltext4" "coltext5"
>
> rowname2 4,428571   4,326531   4,265306   3,959184   3,306122
>
> rowname3 0,469665   0,3328301  0,1776079  -0,1758072 0,0870965
>
> rowname4 4,275862   4,206897   4,137931   3,931034   3,379310
>
>
>
>> deparse(jjmat)
>
> [1] "structure(list(\"coltext1\", 4.42857142857143, 0.469664970752337, "
>
>
> [2] "    4.27586206896552, \"coltext2\", 4.3265306122449,
> 0.332830055973803, "
>
> [3] "    4.20689655172414, \"coltext3\", 4.26530612244898,
> 0.177607859264292, "
>
> [4] "    4.13793103448276, \"coltext4\", 3.95918367346939,
> -0.175807245137424, "
>
> [5] "    3.93103448275862, \"coltext5\", 3.30612244897959,
> 0.087096493847482, "
>
> [6] "    3.37931034482759), .Dim = c(4, 5), .Dimnames =
> list(c(\"rowname1\", "
>
> [7] "\"rowname2\", \"rowname3\", \"rowname4\"), c(\"f2a1\", \"f2b1\",
> \"f5a1\", "
>
> [8] "\"f5b1\", \"f5c1\")))"
>
>
>
>
>
> Do I have to change the structure of jjmat? Thanks for your comments!
>
>
>
> Greetings,
>
>
>
> Michael
>
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595