Replace contents of factor column in R dataframe

Question

I need to replace the levels of a factor column in a dataframe. Using the iris dataset as an example, how would I replace any cells which contain virginic

Answer 1

In case you have to replace multiple values and if you don't mind "refactoring" your variable with as.factor(as.character(...)) you could try the following:

replace.values <- function(search, replace, x){
  stopifnot(length(search) == length(replace))
  xnew <- replace[ match(x, search) ]
  takeOld <- is.na(xnew) & !is.na(x)
  xnew[takeOld] <- x[takeOld]
  return(xnew)
}

iris$Species <- as.factor(search=c("oldValue1","oldValue2"),
                          replace=c("newValue1","newValue2"),
                          x=as.character(iris$Species))