Number values include comma -- how do I make these numeric?

Question

I have a whole column of numbers that include comma separators at the thousands. When I try to create a numeric column out of them, anything over 999 becomes NA.

I used cbind:

df <- cbind(df, var2 = as.numeric(as.character(df$var1)))

and wound up with:

        var1  var2
1   2,518.50    NA
2   2,518.50    NA
3   5,018.50    NA
4   4,018.50    NA
5  10,018.50    NA
6     318.50 318.5
7   2,518.50    NA
8   3,518.50    NA
9   7,518.50    NA
10  1,018.50    NA

Is there a way to strip the commas or tell as.numeric how to handle them?

Solution 1

If you are trying to add a new column var2 to df, you can use the following

  df$var2 <- as.numeric(gsub(",", "", as.character(df$var1)))

Solution 2

Use as.numeric(gsub(",", "", df$var1)).

You want to use gsub as sub will only replace the first comma.

Comments

[Amanda]

Nice. I don't even need cbind?

[Ricardo Saporta]

nope, with data frames you can just assign. df[[var2]] <- value and df$var2 <- value both work.