Override column types when importing data using readr::read_csv() when there are many columns

Question

I am trying to read a csv file using readr::read_csv in R. The csv file that I am importing has about 150 columns, I am just including the first few columns for the example. I a

Answer 1

Yes. For example to force numeric data to be treated as characters:

examplecsv = "a,b,c\n1,2,a\n3,4,d"
read_csv(examplecsv)
# A tibble: 2 x 3
#      a     b     c
#    
#1     1     2     a
#2     3     4     d
read_csv(examplecsv, col_types = cols(b = col_character()))
# A tibble: 2 x 3
#      a     b     c
#    
#1     1     2     a
#2     3     4     d

Choices are:

col_character() 
col_date()
col_time() 
col_datetime() 
col_double() 
col_factor() # to enforce, will never be guessed
col_integer() 
col_logical() 
col_number() 
col_skip() # to force skip column

More: http://readr.tidyverse.org/articles/readr.html