[R] read.table() and scientific notation

[January Weiner]

Dear all,

I am having troubles importing values written as scientific notation
using read.table(). I'm sure this is a frequent problem, as many
people in my lab have this problem as well, so I'm sure that I just
have troubles googling for the right solution.

The problem is, that, given a file like that:

a 1 2e-4
b 2 3e-8
...

the third column gets imported as a factor, or a string if I set the
as.is parameter of read.table to TRUE for this column. However, I just
want a simple numeric vector :-) I'm sure there is a simple trick for
this. If you can point me to the right function, or manual, I think I
should be able to find out the details myself.

Thanks in advance,
January

-- 
------------ January Weiner 3  ---------------------+---------------
Division of Bioinformatics, University of Muenster  |  Schloßplatz 4
(+49)(251)8321634                                   |  D48149 Münster
http://www.uni-muenster.de/Biologie.Botanik/ebb/    |  Germany