How to read numeric values as factors in R?

r csv r-factor
Ayush Raj Singh picture Ayush Raj Singh · Jun 28, 2013 · Viewed 8.7k times · Source

I have a data frame A which has numeric column like:

zip code
00601
00602
00607

and so on.

If I read this in R using read.csv, they are read as numeric entities. I want them as factors.

I tried converting them back to factor using 

A <- as.factor(A)

But this removes starting zeroes and make A like

zip code
601
602
607

I do not want this. I want to save zeroes.

Answer

Hong Ooi picture Hong Ooi · Jun 28, 2013

Use colClasses in your read.csv call to read them in as character or factor: read.csv(*, colClasses="factor").

Related questions

How to import multiple .csv files at once?

Suppose we have a folder containing multiple data.csv files, each containing the same number of variables but each from different times. Is there a way in R to import them all simultaneously rather than having to import them all …

Read More
How do I import a CSV file in R?

I have a .csv file in my workstation. How can I open that file in R and do statistical calculation?

Read More
Subset of rows containing NA (missing) values in a chosen column of a data frame

We have a data frame from a CSV file. The data frame DF has columns that contain observed values and a column (VaR2) that contains the date at which a measurement has been taken. If the date was not recorded, …

Read More