How to read csv file in R where some values contain the percent symbol (%)

Question

Is there a clean/automatic way to convert CSV values formatted with as percents (with trailing % symbol) in R?

Here is some example dat

Answer 1

There is no "percentage" type in R. So you need to do some post-processing:

DF <- read.table(text="actual,simulated,percent error
2.1496,8.6066,-300%
0.9170,8.0266,-775%
7.9406,0.2152,97%
4.9637,3.5237,29%", sep=",", header=TRUE)

DF[,3] <- as.numeric(gsub("%", "",DF[,3]))/100

#  actual simulated percent.error
#1 2.1496    8.6066         -3.00
#2 0.9170    8.0266         -7.75
#3 7.9406    0.2152          0.97
#4 4.9637    3.5237          0.29