FacsToChars: Convert All Factor Columns to Character Columns

In splitstackshape: Stack and Reshape Datasets After Splitting Concatenated Values

Convert All Factor Columns to Character Columns

Description

Sometimes, we forget to use the stringsAsFactors argument when using utils::read.table() and related functions. By default, R converts character columns to factors. Instead of re-reading the data, the FacsToChars function will identify which columns are currently factors, and convert them all to characters.

Usage

FacsToChars(mydf)

Arguments

mydf	The name of your data.frame

Author(s)

Ananda Mahto

See Also

utils::read.table()

Examples

## Some example data
dat <- data.frame(title = c("title1", "title2", "title3"),
         author = c("author1", "author2", "author3"),
         customerID = c(1, 2, 1))

str(dat) # current structure
dat2 <- splitstackshape:::FacsToChars(dat)
str(dat2) # Your new object
str(dat)  # Original object is unaffected

splitstackshape documentation built on March 21, 2026, 9:08 a.m.