[R] Converting dollar value (factors) to numeric

[Phil Spector]

Kev-
   The most reliable way to do the conversion is as follows:

> x = factor(c('$112.11','$119.15','$121.32'))
> as.numeric(sub('\\$','',as.character(x)))
[1] 112.11 119.15 121.32

This way negative quantities and numbers without 
dollar signs are handled correctly.  There's certainly
no need to create a new input file.

It may be easier to understand as

as.numeric(sub('$','',as.character(x),fixed=TRUE))

which gives the same result.
 					- Phil Spector
 					 Statistical Computing Facility
 					 Department of Statistics
 					 UC Berkeley
 					 spector at stat.berkeley.edu


On Wed, 5 May 2010, Wang, Kevin (SYD) wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to read in a bunch of CSV files into R where many columns are
> coded like $111.11.  When reading them in they are treated as factors.
>
> I'm wondering if there is an easy way to convert them into numeric in R
> (as I don't want to modify the source data)?  I've done some searches
> and can't seem to find an easy way to do this.
>
> I apologise if this is a trivial question, I haven't been using R for a
> while.
>
> Many thanks in advance!
>
> Cheers
>
> Kev
>
> Kevin Wang
>> Senior Advisor, Health and Human Services Practice
>> Government Advisory Services
>>
>> KPMG
>> 10 Shelley Street
>> Sydney  NSW  2000  Australia
>>
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>>
> kevinwang at kpmg.com.au
>
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