[R] why it returns list level number instead of its content?

[John Kane]

You have read in the data as factors. 
 Try class(data$V4) to see this.

When you are doing something like a cbind R treats the
factors as numbers.  You need to convert the factors
back to character data. 
 Try something like d1 <- as.character(data$V4) d2 <-
as.character(data$V5) and then do a cbind to 
see what happens.  

This is not the proper way to do things, I'm sure, but
it should help you see what is happening.    

--- Hu Chen <chencheva at gmail.com> wrote:

> for example:
> I have a data frame.
> data$V4 returns:
> .....
> [6936] P05796       P11096       P76174       P04475
>       P18775
> [6941] P33225       P76387       P76388       P76388
>       P09375
> [6946] P15300       P15723
> 1375 Levels:  O50190 O65938 O69415 P00274 P00363
> P00364 P00370 P00373 ...
> Q9AJ15
> data$V5 returns something like data$V4
> I want to cbind this two columns, so I use
> new <- cbind(data$V4,data$V5)
> I expect it to return something like:
> [1] P05761 P11986
> [2] .......
> however it returns
> [1] 215 434
> [2] 134 213
> .............
> it uses level number instead of  its content like
> "P05761". What's wrong
> with  it?  how can I get its content instead of
> level number? I can use some
> dirty ways to do that but I didn't understand why.
> 
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> 
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