I have a comma delimited text file in which many columns of numbers are 
also quoted and have commas as well as decimals. I was surprised to find 
read.csv() didn't import this seamlessly, even after messing around with 
the colClasses argument. I did find a solution to convert the character 
strings after reading them in, but wonder if there isn't a better one I 
overlooked.

test = c("10,522.5","11,768.9","11,354.3")
as.numeric(test) # fails
as.numeric(gsub(",","",test)) # works

Any suggestions? Or is this as good as it gets? I'm not complaining ... 
just curious! 

Drew Tyre

School of Natural Resources
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
416 Hardin Hall, East Campus
Lincoln, NE 68583-0974
phone: +1 402 472 4054 fax: +1 402 472 2946
email: atyre2@unl.edu
http://snr.unl.edu/tyre
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