[R-sig-Geo] Converting a dataframe to a character vector

[Taylor, RB]

Thanks Gabor for your help. Is there a way to avoid this section?

 > Lines <- "Repens
 > +  Laurifolia
 > +      Repens
 > +  Laurifolia
 > +  Laurifolia
 > + "

I have simplified the dataset somewhat. The real dataset has over 100 
entries and it would be rather tedious to have to enter each one separately.

Thanks,
Rob Taylor

Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> Try this:
> 
>> Lines <- "Repens
> +  Laurifolia
> +      Repens
> +  Laurifolia
> +  Laurifolia
> + "
>> # replace next line with v <- scan("myfile.dat", what = "")
>> v <- scan(textConnection(Lines), what = "")
> Read 5 items
>> is.vector(v)
> [1] TRUE
>> class(v)
> [1] "character"
>> str(v)
> chr [1:5] "Repens" "Laurifolia" "Repens" "Laurifolia" ...
> 
> 
> On 7/16/07, Taylor, RB <rbt501 at york.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> This isn't quite a spatially related question but perhaps someone can
>> help me with this problem?
>>
>> I have some species name recorded in a tab delim text file. They are all
>> just one word long as seen below. I want to put them into a vector for
>> use in Spatstat, which as far as I can see means reading the data into a
>> data frame and then converting it to a character vector.
>>
>> So first I read the file into R.
>>
>>  > df <- read.table("C:\\temp\\test.txt")
>>  > df
>>           V1
>> 1     Repens
>> 2 Laurifolia
>> 3     Repens
>> 4 Laurifolia
>> 5 Laurifolia
>>
>> # just to check it's a data frame
>>  > is.data.frame(df)
>> [1] TRUE
>>
>> #so far so good, now to try to convert to a vector, preserving the
>> #species names...
>>  > v <- as.vector(df)
>>  > is.vector(v)
>> [1] FALSE
>>
>> Why will it not convert it to a character vector automatically? Ok after
>> consulting the help file I use the "mode" feature to attempt to force it
>> to convert to a character string.
>>
>>  > v <- as.vector(df, mode = "character")
>>  > is.vector(v)
>> [1] TRUE
>>
>> ok some progress .... but then
>>
>>  > v
>> [1] "c(2, 1, 2, 1, 1)"
>>
>> ok I'm confused at this point. What is it actually telling me? That I
>> have a vector with the text string "c(2, 1, 2, 1, 1)" in it?
>>
>> OK, so to be clear I want a vector that looks like this:
>> [1] "Repens" "Laurifolia" "Repens" "Laurifolia" "Laurifolia"
>>
>>
>> Any help would be appreciated.
>> Thanks,
>> Rob
>>
>> -- 
>> Rob Taylor
>>
>> University of York
>> Biology Department
>> PO Box 373
>> York
>> YO10 5YW
>> United Kingdom
>>
>> Work +44 (0)1904 32 8557
>> Mob  +44 (0)777 258 5390
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> R-sig-Geo mailing list
>> R-sig-Geo at stat.math.ethz.ch
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>>

-- 
Rob Taylor

University of York
Biology Department
PO Box 373
York
YO10 5YW
United Kingdom

Work +44 (0)1904 32 8557
Mob  +44 (0)777 258 5390