Why does c(...) returns a number instead of the string in the example below?
> Location$NamePrint
[1] Burundi
273 Levels: Afghanistan Africa ...
> ParentLocation$NamePrint
[1] Eastern Africa
273 Levels: Afghanistan Africa ...
> c(Location$NamePrint, ParentLocation$NamePrint)
[1] 36 71
These numbers are the position of the strings in the levels?
My goal is to create a vector with these two elements (their string value), using c(Location$NamePrint, ParentLocation$NamePrint)
Because it's a factor. For example:
x <- as.factor("a")
c(x)
# [1] 1
To resolve this, we can treat x as.character:
x <- as.character("a")
c(x)
# [1] "a"
As @joran mentions, there's a handy function in forcats for this as well, forcats::fct_c().
See ?c and read the details section for additional information:
Note that factors are treated only via their internal integer codes; one proposal has been to use:
x <- as.factor("a")
y <- as.factor("b")
c.factor <- function(..., recursive=TRUE) unlist(list(...), recursive=recursive)
c.factor(x, y)
# [1] a b
# Levels: a b
The structure (str()) of your objects will reveal that they are factors.
demo1 <- as.factor("Burundi")
demo2 <- as.factor("Eastern Africa")
str(demo1)
See:
> str(demo1)
Factor w/ 1 level "Burundi": 1
So when you concatenate them, this happens:
> c(demo1, demo2)
[1] 1 1
If you want to bring them in to a vector with their text, use as.character:
> c(as.character(demo1), as.character(demo2))
[1] "Burundi" "Eastern Africa"
Or even better, do this to the original vectors, e.g.:
demo1 <- as.character(demo1)
as.characterlike thisc(as.character(Location$NamePrint), as.character(ParentLocation$NamePrint))