CODEWITHSUNDEEP
r
James Notaro
James Notaro

Reputation: 137

Column not copying over through conditional in R

I am trying to read in a table in R then check if the category column of the table matches a certain value, if it does copy the value of a different column over. Thus creating an array of values who's category tag matches with the conditional

B <- read.table("tableFile2.data", sep=";", header=TRUE, row.names=2)
B$new <- ifelse(B$category == "mammal", B$animal, NA)
B$new

With the file

wasted space
more waste
animal;RowName;category
dog;a;mammal
spider;b;insect
monkey;c;mammal
sardine;d;fish
Jeromy;J;angry

However when I execute this and print B$new I get the values

1 NA 2 NA

So the program clearly works for the condition but the correct value is not being copied over

Upvotes: 0

Views: 39

Answers (1)

Kunal Puri
Kunal Puri

Reputation: 3427

First of all, the first query (if the file actually looks like the one that you have described in the question) should be:

B <- read.table("tableFile2.data", sep=";", header=TRUE, skip=2)

For accomplishing the above mentioned task, you can run this query:

B$new <- ifelse(B$category == "mammal", as.character(B$animal), NA)

The reason behind the output that you mentioned is the fact that in this data frame B, the column 'animal' is taken as a FACTOR and not character.

The numbers that you are getting in your output are similar to one obtained if you cast B$animal as 'integer'.

Upvotes: 1

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