[R] character to numeric conversion

Robin Hankin r.hankin at noc.soton.ac.uk
Mon Mar 19 10:18:44 CET 2007


Hi.

Is there a straightforward way to convert a character string  
containing comma-delimited
numbers  to a numeric vector?

In my application, I use

system(executable.string, intern=TRUE)

which returns a string like

"[0.E-38, 2.096751179214927596171268230,  
3.678944959657480671183123052, 4.976528845643001020345216157,  
6.072390165503099343887569007, 7.007958550337542210168866070,  
7.807464185827177139302778736, 8.486139455817034846608029724,  
9.053706780665060873259065771, 9.516172308326877463284426111,  
9.876856047379733199590985269, 10.13695826383869052536062804,  
10.29580989588667234885515374, 10.35092785255025551187463209,  
10.29795676261278695909972578, 10.13052574735986793562227138,  
9.839990935943625006580521345, 9.414977153151389385186358494,  
8.840562526759586215404890348, 8.096830792651667245232639586,  
7.156244887881612948153311800, 5.978569259122249264778017262,  
4.499809670330265066808481929, 2.602689685444383764768503589, 0.E-38]"


(the output is a single line).   In a big run, the string may contain  
10^5 or possibly 10^6 numbers.

What's the recommended way to convert this to a numeric vector?






--
Robin Hankin
Uncertainty Analyst
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton
European Way, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK
  tel  023-8059-7743



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