Boris - Boy, do I feel dumb - that’s exactly what I wanted. I’ve tried this every way I can think of without assigning the result to the original name of the data frame. I was trying to assign the result to a variable (test$place).
Can u pls explain to me why assigning the result to the new variable was wrong? BTW, really appreciate your help. Ken kmna...@gmail.com 914-450-0816 (tel) 347-730-4813 (fax) > On Mar 4, 2016, at 9:21 PM, Boris Steipe <boris.ste...@utoronto.ca> wrote: > > LOL you still need to assign it though: > > > test <- mutate(test, place = factor(substr(test$subject,1,3))) > > str(test) > 'data.frame': 6 obs. of 7 variables: > $ subject: Factor w/ 6 levels "001-002","002-003",..: 1 2 3 4 5 6 > $ group : Factor w/ 2 levels "boys","girls": 1 1 1 2 2 2 > $ wk1 : int 2 7 9 5 2 1 > $ wk2 : int 3 6 4 7 6 4 > $ wk3 : int 4 5 6 8 3 7 > $ wk4 : int 5 4 1 9 8 4 > $ place : Factor w/ 6 levels "001","002","003",..: 1 2 3 4 5 6 > > > Without assigning the result, the output only gets printed to console. > Remember that R is a functional language - a properly written R functio does > not change anything, it only returns its result. > > :-) > > > On Mar 4, 2016, at 4:13 PM, KMNanus <kmna...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> If I call mutate this way - mutate(test, place = >> factor(substr(test$subject,1,3))), I get the same output as above but when I >> call class(test$place), I get NULL and the variable disappears. > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.
