Create Factor Object

factor

Create Factor Object

Description

Creates or tests for factors.

Usage

factor(x = character(), levels, labels = levels,
    exclude = NA, ordered = is.ordered(x), nmax = NA)
is.factor(x)
as.factor(x)

Arguments

x	the data, considered as taking values from a finite set (the levels). Missing values (NAs) are allowed.
levels	an optional vector of levels for the factor. Any data value not matching a value in levels is assigned to NA in the factor. If levels is missing, the default value is the sorted list of distinct values of x. If x is character data, or if you want to exclude other values from the levels, you can use the exclude argument.
labels	an optional vector of values to use as labels for the levels of the factor. The default is levels.
exclude	a vector of values to exclude from forming levels. Any value that appears in both x and exclude is NA in the result, and it does not appear in the default levels attribute.
ordered	a logical value. If is.ordered(x) (the default), it creates an ordered factor (class "ordered","factor" ).
nmax	a positive integer or NA. If a positive integer and the levels argument is omitted, then it will be considered an error of x contains more than nmax distinct values.

Details

A factor is an integer vector with the class attribute factor and a levels attribute that determines the character strings to be included in the vector.

factor creates a factor object out of data and allows one to set the levels attribute.
is.factor determines whether a vector is a factor.
as.factor coerces a vector into a factor.

Value

factor	returns an object of class "factor" or class "ordered","factor" representing values taken from the finite set given by levels. This object should not be numeric. Comparisons and other operations behave as if they operated on values from the levels set, which is always of mode character. NAs can appear, indicating that the corresponding value is undefined.
is.factor	returns TRUE if x is a factor. Otherwise, it returns FALSE.
as.factor	returns x if x is a factor. Otherwise, it returns factor(x).

See Also

Examples

occupation <- c("doctor", "lawyer", "mechanic", "engineer")
income <- c(150000, 100000, 30000, 60000)
factor(occupation)
factor(cut(income, breaks = c(0, 30000, 70000, 200000)),
           labels = c("low", "mid", "high"))
# Make readable labels:
occ <- factor(occupation, level = c("d", "l", "m", "e"),
    label = c("Doctor", "Lawyer", "Mechanic", "Engineer"))
color <- c("red", "red", "red", "green", "blue")
colors <- factor(color, c("red", "green", "blue"))
table(colors)  # table counting occurrences of colors
# Treat word "Unknown" as a missing value flag:
colors <- factor(c("red", "green", "Unknown", "blue"), 
   exclude = "Unknown")
is.na(colors)  # 3rd value will be TRUE, the rest FALSE
# Function to create a factor if there are many repeats,
# otherwise return the input x
asFactorIfManyRepeats <- function(x, nmax=max(length(x)/5, 2)) {
   tryCatch(factor(x, nmax = nmax), error=function(e) x)
}
levels(asFactorIfManyRepeats(letters))
levels(asFactorIfManyRepeats(rep(letters[1:3], len=100)))

Package base version 6.1.4-13
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