Try to add options(stringsAsFactors = FALSE) in your Rprofile.site (in the etc directory). Using as.is = TRUE seems safer than stringsAsFactors = FALSE in the read.fwf function. Because as.is is set to FALSE by default and stringsAsFactors is not set.
HTH, Thierry ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- ir. Thierry Onkelinx Instituut voor natuur- en bosonderzoek / Research Institute for Nature and Forest Cel biometrie, methodologie en kwaliteitszorg / Section biometrics, methodology and quality assurance Gaverstraat 4 9500 Geraardsbergen Belgium tel. + 32 54/436 185 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.inbo.be To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of. ~ Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher The plural of anecdote is not data. ~ Roger Brinner The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data. ~ John Tukey -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- Van: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Namens Asher Meir Verzonden: zondag 31 augustus 2008 11:02 Aan: r-help@r-project.org Onderwerp: [R] Avoiding factors and levels in data frames Hello all. I am an experienced R user, I have used R for many years for a wide variety of applications. However, I keep on running into one obstacle: I never want factors or levels in my data frames, but I keep on getting them. Is there any way to globally turn this whole feature of data frames off? Using options(stringAsFactors=FALSE) does not seem to work. Alternatively, if I have a data frame with levels, can I just get rid of them in that data frame? Here is an example: I have a large text file, of which part is in the fixed-width tabular form I need. I created a widths vector and a column names vector. I then read the file as follows: raw1<-read.fwf(fn1,widths=widmax,col.names=headermax,stringsAsFactors=FA LSE) But raw1 still has factors! It is an old class data frame: > is(raw1) [1] "data.frame" "oldClass" And it still has levels: > raw1[1,1] [1] Gustav wind 229 Levels: - - - - - - - - - - - WIN - - - M ... Z INDICATES C My question is: 1. Can I get rid of the levels in raw1? 2. Even better -- can I stop it getting read in as a data frame with factors? 3. Even better -- can I just tell R to never use factors in my data frames? Or any other solution that occurs to people -- maybe this is the wrong way to go about reading in fixed width data in this kind of file. I would appreciate any help. Asher ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list 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. Dit bericht en eventuele bijlagen geven enkel de visie van de schrijver weer en binden het INBO onder geen enkel beding, zolang dit bericht niet bevestigd is door een geldig ondertekend document. The views expressed in this message and any annex are purely those of the writer and may not be regarded as stating an official position of INBO, as long as the message is not confirmed by a duly signed document ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list 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.
