I have a sample data frame like below:
data <- data.frame(matrix(sample(1:40), 4, 10, dimnames = list(1:4, LETTERS[1:10])))
I want to know how can I select multiple columns and convert them together to factors. I usually do it in the way like data$A = as.factor(data$A)
. But when the data frame is very large and contains lots of columns, this way will be very time consuming. Does anyone know of a better way to do it?
Choose some columns to coerce to factors:
cols <- c("A", "C", "D", "H")
Use lapply()
to coerce and replace the chosen columns:
data[cols] <- lapply(data[cols], factor) ## as.factor() could also be used
Check the result:
sapply(data, class)
# A B C D E F G
# "factor" "integer" "factor" "factor" "integer" "integer" "integer"
# H I J
# "factor" "integer" "integer"