Your data in the dataframe is really a factor; you can see that with 'str'. Here is an outline of what you can do to remove the extra characters and then convert to a number.
> x <- data.frame(actual06="$146,990.33") > str(x) 'data.frame': 1 obs. of 1 variable: $ actual06: Factor w/ 1 level "$146,990.33": 1 > typeof(x$actual06) [1] "integer" > # need to convert to character and get rid of extra characters > y <- as.character(x$actual06) > y [1] "$146,990.33" > (z <- gsub("[$,]", "", y)) # now a numeric character string [1] "146990.33" > as.numeric(z) [1] 146990.3 > > On 10/17/07, Roger Mason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > > I am trying to do arithmetic on numbers extracted from a PostgreSQL > database, wherein the numbers are stored as type "money". The > transcript below illustrates the problem. > > > Membersind06 <- sqlQuery(channel,"select * from income where rowname like > > '%Membersind%'") > > names(Membersind06) > [1] "rowname" "item" "budget07" "budget08" "actual06" > > Membersind06$actual06 > [1] $149,625.00 > Levels: $149,625.00 > > typeof(Membersind06$actual06) > [1] "integer" > > Membersind06$actual06/10 > [1] NA > Warning message: > / not meaningful for factors in: Ops.factor(Membersind06$actual06, 10) > > Can someone show me how to convert the quantity stored in > Membersind06$actual06 to a numeric type such that I can perfor > arithmetic operations on it? > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Jim Holtman Cincinnati, OH +1 513 646 9390 What is the problem you are trying to solve? ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.