read.table reads numbers as factors
r
Solution
This was a change make in R 3.1. There as been much discussion on the R-devel list about this. Basically if a number has too many digits, it's converted to a factor. This behavior is supposted be be reverted in 3.1.1 but no release date has been set as far as I know.
Problem
I have the following sample file: ``` "id";"PCA0";"PCA1";"PCA2" 1;6.142741644872954;1.2075898020608253;1.8946959360032403 2;-0.5329026419681557;-8.586870627925729;4.510113575138726 ``` When I try to read it with: ``` d <- read.table("file.csv", sep=";", header=T) ``` `id` is a integer column, `PCA0` a numeric an all subsequent columns are factors ``` class(d$iid) [1] "integer" class(d$PCA0) [1] "numeric" class(d$PCA1) [1] "factor" class(d$PCA2) [1] "factor" ``` Why aren't the other columns numeric as well? I know how to convert the columns, but I want my script to work without manually casting the types. Why doesn't R recognize the numeric columns?