On Fri, 19 Mar 2004, Randy Zelick wrote: > I got three responses for help on the leading zero problem. Thank you.
Well, it seems that you didn't tell us what the actual problem was: please consult the posting guide and its references and learn to ask the right question. > Alas I still don't have it working. Here are more specifics: > > I read in a data file like this: > > participants<-read.table("C:/Work/blah-blah") > > The data file consists of the fields last name, first name, social > security number, response score 1, response score 2 and so forth. > > If in the console window I type "participants" I get something like: > > Jones Norman 786123344 98.2 16.3 > Flintstone Fred 111457654 10.1 8.8 > Ugly Butt 89733456 66.7 32.0 > > The problem is that the 3rd social security number is really "089733456" > and it needs to look like that. Did you read the help page for read.table or the `R Data Import/Export Manual'? Set colClasses and avoid the conversion to numeric. You didn't tell us you were reading a file with leading zeroes. > None of the methods suggested seemed to work. I could make the social > security object alone print with leading zeros, but not as part of the > data frame. All the solutions I have seen do work, but mine is very simple. You need to convert just that column (which is not what you said you wanted). library(MASS) hills$climb <- gsub(" ", "0", format(hills$climb)) hills You could also use hills$climb <- formatC(hills$climb, format="f", flag="0", digits=0, width=4) (Martin didn't give all the details) hills$climb <- sprintf("%04.0f", as.double(hills$climb)) In every case, printing the data frame does show leading zeroes. -- Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Professor of Applied Statistics, 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 ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html