How to read data when some numbers contain commas as thousand separator?

Question

I have a csv file where some of the numerical values are expressed as strings with commas as thousand separator, e.g. \"1,513\" instead of 1513. Wh

Answer 1

We can also use readr::parse_number, the columns must be characters though. If we want to apply it for multiple columns we can loop through columns using lapply

df[2:3] <- lapply(df[2:3], readr::parse_number)
df

#  a        b        c
#1 a    12234       12
#2 b      123  1234123
#3 c     1234     1234
#4 d 13456234    15342
#5 e    12312 12334512

Or use mutate_at from dplyr to apply it to specific variables.

library(dplyr)
df %>% mutate_at(2:3, readr::parse_number)
#Or
df %>% mutate_at(vars(b:c), readr::parse_number)

data

df <- data.frame(a = letters[1:5], 
                 b = c("12,234", "123", "1,234", "13,456,234", "123,12"),
                 c = c("12", "1,234,123","1234", "15,342", "123,345,12"), 
                 stringsAsFactors = FALSE)