R - How to change formatting in one column

Question

is there any option in R to change format of entire column? I have a number containing 13 digits and sometimes is starts with 0 and when I am reading dataframe these zeros are missed. I would like to use something like excel formatting and set up column for 13 digits.

I probably should use something like my.dataframe[,my_column] <-

Regards

Possible duplicate of [Controlling number of decimal digits in print output in R](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2287616/controlling-number-of-decimal-digits-in-print-output-in-r) — Rui Barradas, Mar 08 '18 at 19:03

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 07 '18 at 12:00

1

If you just want to add leading zeroes to a column, you can use the str_pad command from the stringr package:

library(stringr)
digit <- 123456789
str_pad(digit, width = 13, side = "left", pad = "0")
[1] "0000123456789"

Also this might help: Format number as fixed width, with leading zeros

answered Mar 07 '18 at 12:00

Cettt

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How can in use this in one column in dataframe? Command like str_pad(mydf[[2]],width = 13, side = "left", pad = "0") show proper result on console but is not changing anything in a data frame. – RafMil Apr 04 '18 at 08:18
1

it shows you the result because you are asking for the result. If you want to assign the result to something you have to tell R: mydf$newcolumn <- str_pad(mydf[[2]],width = 13, side = "left", pad = "0") – Cettt Apr 04 '18 at 09:35
Thanks. Now everything is fine :) – RafMil Apr 04 '18 at 11:39

R - How to change formatting in one column

1 Answers1