On FC5 Linux: gannet% cat > foo.dat a 1 2e-4 b 2 3e-8 gannet% R ... > read.table("foo.dat") V1 V2 V3 1 a 1 2e-04 2 b 2 3e-08 > sapply(read.table("foo.dat"), class) V1 V2 V3 "factor" "integer" "numeric"
so please tell us your environment and give a reproducible example. (This is using the OS function strtod, so it might be a deficiency in your OS's implementation of ISO C.) On Tue, 10 Oct 2006, January Weiner wrote: > Dear all, > > I am having troubles importing values written as scientific notation > using read.table(). I'm sure this is a frequent problem, as many > people in my lab have this problem as well, so I'm sure that I just > have troubles googling for the right solution. > > The problem is, that, given a file like that: > > a 1 2e-4 > b 2 3e-8 > ... > > the third column gets imported as a factor, or a string if I set the > as.is parameter of read.table to TRUE for this column. However, I just > want a simple numeric vector :-) I'm sure there is a simple trick for > this. If you can point me to the right function, or manual, I think I > should be able to find out the details myself. > > Thanks in advance, > January > > -- 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 ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch 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.