How to Convert Character to Numeric in R?

In this article, we will discuss how to convert characters to numeric in R Programming Language.

We can convert to numeric by using as.numeric() function.

Syntax:

as.numeric(character)

where, character is an character vector

Example:

R

# create a vector with 5 characters
data = c('1', '2', '3', '4', '5')

# display type
class(data)

# convert to numeric
final = as.numeric(data)
print(final)

# display type
class(final)

Output:

[1] "character"
[1] 1 2 3 4 5
[1] "numeric"

Convert a column from character to numeric

Here we are considering a dataframe and then convert a dataframe column from character  to numeric.

Syntax:

as.numeric(dataframe$column_name)

Example:

R

# create a dataframe with 4 rows and 3 columns
data = data.frame(marks1=c('90', '78', '89', '76'),
                  marks2=c('92', '68', '78', '96'),
                  marks3=c('90', '78', '89', '76'))

# convert to numeric for marks1 column
print(as.numeric(data$marks1))

# convert to numeric for marks2 column
print(as.numeric(data$marks2))

# convert to numeric for marks3 column
print(as.numeric(data$marks3))

Output:

[1] 90 78 89 76
[1] 92 68 78 96
[1] 90 78 89 76