CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rexcelcsv
Natalia
Natalia

Reputation: 399

How do I read csv with large numbers (probably scientific notation) in R?

I have some 13-digit numbers in an XLS file and I use Excel to generate the CSV file because I need to process it in R.

Then when R read the CSV file, it cannot recognize the big numbers. For example, 1329100082670 would appear like 1.329E+12 in R and lost its precision.

I've tried to format the big numbers as text in Excel and then save it as CSV but that didn't work!

Thanks in advance!

Upvotes: 11

Views: 11197

Answers (1)

MrFlick
MrFlick

Reputation: 206232

The numbers are probably all there, by default R doesn't aways show them. See

> a<-1329100082670
> a
[1] 1.3291e+12
> dput(a)
1329100082670

The dput() shows all the digits are retained even if they display on screen in scientific notation. You can discourage R from using scientific notation by setting the scipen option. Something like

options(scipen=999)

will turn off most scientific notation. But really, what it looks like on screen shouldn't be too important to you hopefully.

Upvotes: 11

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