stringsAsFactors
With stringsAsFactors, you can tell R whether it should convert strings in the flat file to factors.
For all importing functions in the utils package, this argument is TRUE, which means that you import strings as factors. This only makes sense if the strings you import represent categorical variables in R. If you set stringsAsFactors to FALSE, the data frame columns corresponding to strings in your text file will be character.
You'll again be working with the swimming_pools.csv file. It contains two columns (Name and Address), which shouldn't be factors.
This exercise is part of the course
Importing Data in R (Part 1)
Exercise instructions
- Use
read.csv()to import the data in"swimming_pools.csv"as a data frame calledpools; make sure that strings are imported as characters, not as factors. - Using
str(), display the structure of the dataset and check that you indeed get character vectors instead of factors.
Hands-on interactive exercise
Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.
# Import swimming_pools.csv correctly: pools
# Check the structure of pools