Yep, type.convert was exactly what I was looking for (with as.is=TRUE). Thanks!
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 1:31 PM, Prof Brian Ripley <rip...@stats.ox.ac.uk>wrote: > On 21/03/2013 18:20, Jonathan Greenberg wrote: > >> Given an arbitrary set of character vectors: >> >> myvect1 <- c("abc","3","4") >> myvect2 <- c("2","3","4") >> >> I would like to develop a function that will convert any vectors that can >> be PROPERLY converted to a numeric (myvect2) into a numeric, but leaves >> character vectors which cannot be converted (myvect1) alone. Is there any >> simple way to do this (e.g. some function that tests if a vector is >> coercible to a numeric before doing so)? >> >> --j >> > > ?type.convert > > It does depend what you mean by 'properly'. Can > "123.456789012344567890123455" be converted 'properly'? [See the NEWS for > R-devel.] > > -- > Brian D. Ripley, rip...@stats.ox.ac.uk > Professor of Applied Statistics, > http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~**ripley/<http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/> > University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) > 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) > Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 > > ______________________________**________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/**listinfo/r-help<https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/** > posting-guide.html <http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Jonathan A. Greenberg, PhD Assistant Professor Global Environmental Analysis and Remote Sensing (GEARS) Laboratory Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 607 South Mathews Avenue, MC 150 Urbana, IL 61801 Phone: 217-300-1924 http://www.geog.illinois.edu/~jgrn/ AIM: jgrn307, MSN: jgrn...@hotmail.com, Gchat: jgrn307, Skype: jgrn3007 [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ 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.