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

[Gabor Grothendieck]

See the comment.

On 7/16/07, Taylor, RB <rbt501 at york.ac.uk> wrote:
> 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
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> R-sig-Geo at stat.math.ethz.ch
> >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-geo
> >>
>
> --
> 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
>