[R] Cleaning up messy Excel data

[John Kane]

(mydata <- as.factor(c("1","2","3", ">2", "5", ">2")))
str(mydata)

newdata <- as.character(mydata)

newdata[newdata==">2"] <- 0
newdata <- as.numeric(newdata)
str(newdata)

We really need to keep Excel (and other spreadsheets) out of peoples hands.

John Kane
Kingston ON Canada


> -----Original Message-----
> From: noahsilverman at ucla.edu
> Sent: Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:27:13 -0800
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Cleaning up messy Excel data
> 
> Unfortunately, some data I need to work with was delivered in a rather
> messy Excel file.  I want to import into R and clean up some things so
> that I can do my analysis.  Pulling in a CSV from Excel is the easy part.
> 
> My current challenge is dealing with some text mixed in the values.
> i.e.   118   5.7   <2.0  3.7
> 
> Since this column in Excel has a "<2.0" value, then R reads the column as
> a factor with levels.  Ideally, I want to convert it a normal vector of
> scalars and code code the "<2.0" as 0.
> 
> Can anyone suggest an easy way to do this?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> 
> --
> Noah Silverman
> UCLA Department of Statistics
> 8117 Math Sciences Building
> Los Angeles, CA 90095
> 
> 
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