xify <- function(number) { fn <- format(number) fn3 <- unlist(strsplit(fn, "\\.")) if (length(fn3) == 1) paste(rep("X", as.numeric(fn3)), collapse="") else paste(paste(rep("X", as.numeric(fn3)[1]-as.numeric(fn3)[2]), collapse=""), paste(rep("X", as.numeric(fn3)[2]), collapse=""), sep=".") }