[R] I'm sure I'm missing something with formatC() or sprintf()

[William Dunlap]

sprintf's "%<number>s" format descriptor ignores initial 0's in <number>,
in C's sprintf and in R's.  Here are 2 ways to do it:
  > z <- c("5", "45", "345", "2345", "12345")
  > sprintf("%05d", as.integer(z))
  [1] "00005" "00045" "00345" "02345" "12345"
  > gsub(" ", "0", sprintf("%5s", z))
  [1] "00005" "00045" "00345" "02345" "12345"

Bill Dunlap
Spotfire, TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of z2.0
> Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 11:16 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] I'm sure I'm missing something with formatC() or sprintf()
> 
> I have a four-digit string I want to convert to five digits. Take the
> following frame:
> 
> zip
> 2108
> 60321
> 60321
> 22030
> 91910
> 
> I need row 1 to read '02108'. This forum directed me to formatC previously
> (thanks!) That usually works but, for some reason, it's not in this
> instance. Neither of the syntaxes below change '2108' to '02108.' The values
> in cand_receipts[,1] are of type 'character.'
> 
> cand_receipts[,1] <- formatC(cand_receipts[,1], width = 5, format = 's',
> flag = '0')
> cand_receipts[,1] <- sprintf("%05s", cand_receipts[,1])
> 
>  Any thoughts?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Zack
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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