How to convert a character data frame to numeric data frame in R?

Sometimes numerical values are recorded as character values and we need to convert them to numeric type before starting our analysis. This is also possible for a whole data frame in R. Therefore, we can use sapply function to convert the columns of the data frame to numeric type and save the output in a data frame by reading it with as.data.frame.

Example1

Consider the below data frame −

 Live Demo

x<−sample(c("1","2","3"),20,replace=TRUE) df1<−data.frame(x) df1

Output

   x 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 1 5 2 6 3 7 1 8 2 9 2 10 2 11 1 12 1 13 2 14 2 15 1 16 1 17 3 18 2 19 3 20 1

Checking the structure of df1 −

Example

str(df1)

Output

'data.frame': 20 obs. of 1 variable: $ x: chr "2" "2" "2" "1" ...

Converting the data type of columns of df1 to numeric data type −

Example

df1<−as.data.frame(sapply(df1,as.numeric)) str(df1)

Output

'data.frame': 20 obs. of 1 variable: $ x: num 2 2 2 1 2 3 1 2 2 2 ...

Example2

 Live Demo

y1<−sample(c("254","324","220","301"),20,replace=TRUE) df2<−data.frame(y1) df2

Output

   y1 1  324 2  254 3  220 4  254 5 220 6 220 7 324 8 254 9 324 10 220 11 324 12 324 13 301 14 324 15 220 16 301 17 301 18 324 19 301 20 254

Example

str(df2)

Output

'data.frame': 20 obs. of 1 variable: $ y1: chr "324" "254" "220" "254" ...

Example

df2<−as.data.frame(sapply(df2,as.numeric)) str(df2)

Output

'data.frame': 20 obs. of 1 variable: $ y1: num 324 254 220 254 220 220 324 254 324 220 ...