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

You want to replace the values in a dataset column, but you're getting an error like this:

invalid factor level, NA generated

Try this instead:

levels(dataframe$column)[levels(dataframe$column)=='old_value'] <- 'new_value'

Answer 2

A more general solution that works with all the data frame at once and where you don't have to add new factors levels is:

data.mtx <- as.matrix(data.df)
data.mtx[which(data.mtx == "old.value.to.replace")] <- "new.value"
data.df <- as.data.frame(data.mtx)

A nice feature of this code is that you can assign as many values as you have in your original data frame at once, not only one "new.value", and the new values can be random values. Thus you can create a complete new random data frame with the same size as the original.