I have a column ("rates")which is a factor
with several levels such as:
16 Levels: -0,186% -0,229% -0,326% ...
When I try to convert it to numeric
, NAs are introduced and I can't figure out how to do it properly.
rates=as.numeric(gsub(",", ".", rates))
rates=as.numeric(sub("%", "e-2", rates))
I also tried the following, which was the answer to a similar question, but it does not work either.
rates=as.numeric(gsub("\\%", "", rates))
Another option is to use the parse_number
-function from the readr
-package and specify that a comma is used as decimal mark:
library(readr)
parse_number(rates, locale = locale(decimal_mark = ','))
which gives:
[1] -0.186 -0.229 -0.326
Used data:
rates <- as.factor(c("-0,186%", "-0,229%", "-0,326%"))
Use gsub:
# Example vector
vec <- as.factor(c("-0,186%", "-0,229%", "-0,326%"))
# Convert vector to numeric
vec <- as.numeric(gsub(",", ".", gsub("%", "", as.character(vec))))
I assume the levels of your initial factor are chars. Then you need to do both replacements at the same time:
rates=as.numeric(gsub(",", ".", gsub("%", "e-2", rates)))