[R] reading a column as a character vector

[Greg Snow]

The strsplit function is probably the closest R function to perls split function.  For more detailed control the gsubfn package can be useful.

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Gamliel Beyderman
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 3:35 PM
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: [R] reading a column as a character vector

Hi!

I have 2 columns (even though the data looks like there's more columns than
just two) of data in the following format:

0,"58905313R0EOL" "229742002R0EOL" "58905312R0EOL"
1,"58905317R0DBL" "58905303R0DBL" "58905313R0IL" "58905313R0VH"
"58905313R0EOL" "223354003R0IL" "223354003R0VH" "58905308R0DBL"
"58905308R0VM" "58905301R0DBL" "229742002R0IL" "229742002R0VH"
"229742002R0EOL"

I can change the format of the input (remove quotes, add spaces, only put
quotes around the entire list of codes...)

The first column is numeric, the second column is a character vector of
event codes. Ultimately, I want to to transform the second column into a
factor where each event code (such as 58905313R0EOL or 216918000R0DBL) is a
separate level.

while the following statement works:

reduce2<-read.table("reduce2.csv", sep=",",
colClasses=c("integer","factor"))

it does not know to break the event vectors into separate levels, the factor
it creates is wrong.

Perhaps there's something in R similar to split in Perl...

Thanks!

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

______________________________________________
R-help at r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.