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I'm trying to format numbers so they have a fixed width introducing leading zeros were needed. Following this this answer to a related question I'm using the formatC function to achieve this. But I am getting unexpected results.

For instance, this code works as expected:

formatC(2102040015, format = "d", width = 10, flag = "0")
## [1] "2102040015"

formatC(102040015, format = "d", width = 10, flag = "0")
## [1] "0102040015"

But when I try to use the very same approach with these numbers I get the strange result:

formatC(2152040015, format = "d", width = 10, flag = "0")
## Warning message:
## In storage.mode(x) <- "integer" :
##  NAs introduced by coercion to integer range
## [1] "        NA"

formatC(2522040015, format = "d", width = 10, flag = "0")
## Warning message:
## In storage.mode(x) <- "integer" :
##  NAs introduced by coercion to integer range
## [1] "        NA"

After some testing, I have come to the conclusion that for every number greater than 2150000000 I get this message and the " NA" result. I would appreciate if you gave me insights about this behavior. Thank you in advance!

Farid
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1 Answers1

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Where you use format="d" you are telling R that you will be formatting integers specifically. The largest integer R can store is .Machine$integer.max which usually is

.Machine$integer.max
# [1] 2147483647

Numbers over that amount are stored as floating point numbers. So perhaps you would like to use this instead:

formatC(2152040015, format = "f", width = 10, flag = "0", digits = 0)
Ronak Shah
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MrFlick
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  • Thank you @MrFlick this totally answers my question! So I guess `format = "f"` (combined with the `digits = 0` argument) is a more general approach, right? Think I would use it from now on. – Farid Feb 27 '20 at 22:16