Type Coercion Shortcuts

Concise aliases for common base R coercion functions. num(), int(), chr() are direct wrappers around as.numeric(), as.integer(), and as.character(). nchr() handles the common pitfall of coercing factors to numeric. bin() converts any two-valued vector to logical.

Usage

num(x, ...)

int(x, ...)

chr(x, ...)

nchr(x)

bin(x, ...)

Arguments

x

a vector. For bin(), exactly two unique non-NA values are required.

...

further arguments passed to the underlying base function (as.numeric, as.integer, as.character, or asBinary()).

Value

a vector of the target type and the same length as x.

Details

num(x, ...)

equivalent to as.numeric(x).

int(x, ...)

equivalent to as.integer(x).

chr(x, ...)

equivalent to as.character(x).

nchr(x)

shortcut for as.numeric(as.character(x)). Avoids the trap of as.numeric(factor) returning internal integer codes instead of the label values.

bin(x, ...)

converts a two-valued vector (character, factor, integer, or numeric) to logical. Mapping follows factor() level order: the first level becomes FALSE, the second TRUE. To reverse, use !bin(x).

See also

nf(), asBinary()

Other data.coerce: as.array.xtabs(), toBaseR()

Examples

num("3.14")
#> [1] 3.14
int(3.9)                               # truncates, does not round
#> [1] 3
chr(1:3)
#> [1] "1" "2" "3"
nchr(factor(c("1.5", "2.0", "1.5"))) # correct: 1.5 2.0 1.5
#> [1] 1.5 2.0 1.5
as.numeric(factor(c("1.5", "2.0")))  # wrong:   1   2
#> [1] 1 2

bin(c(0L, 1L, 0L, 1L))
#> [1] FALSE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE
bin(c("no", "yes", "no"))            # "no" -> FALSE, "yes" -> TRUE
#> [1] FALSE  TRUE FALSE
#> attr(,"coding")
#>  no yes 
#>   0   1 
!bin(c("no", "yes", "no"))           # reversed
#> [1]  TRUE FALSE  TRUE
#> attr(,"coding")
#>  no yes 
#>   0   1 
bin(factor(c("m", "w", "m")))        # "m" -> FALSE, "w" -> TRUE
#> [1] FALSE  TRUE FALSE
#> attr(,"coding")
#> m w 
#> 0 1