so if I have a data.table defined as:
> dt <- data.table (x=c(1,2,3,4), y=c("y","n","y","m"), z=c("pickle",3,8,"egg"))
> dt
x y z
1: 1 y pickle
2: 2 n 3
3: 3 y 8
4: 4 m egg
And a variable
fn <- "z"
I get that I can pull a column from the data.table by the following:
> dt[,fn, with=FALSE]
What I don't know how to do is the data.table equivalent of the following:
> factorFunction <- function(df, fn) {
df[,fn] <- as.factor(df[,fn])
return(df)
}
If I set fn="x" and call factorFunction(data.frame(dt),fn) it works just fine.
So I try it with a data.table, but this doesn't work
> factorFunction <- function(dt, fn) {
dt[,fn, with=FALSE] <- as.factor(dt[,fn, with=FALSE])
return(dt)
}
Error in sort.list(y) : 'x' must be atomic for 'sort.list' Have you called 'sort' on a list?
You can try
dt[,(fn):= factor(.SD[[1L]]),.SDcols=fn]
If there are multiple columns, use lapply(.SD, factor)
Wrapping it in a function
factorFunction <- function(df, fn) {
df[, (fn):= factor(.SD[[1L]]), .SDcols=fn]
}
str(factorFunction(dt, fn))
#Classes ‘data.table’ and 'data.frame': 4 obs. of 3 variables:
#$ x: num 1 2 3 4
#$ y: chr "y" "n" "y" "m"
#$ z: Factor w/ 4 levels "3","8","egg",..: 4 1 2 3
Similar to @akrun's answer:
class(dt[[fn]])
#[1] "character"
setFactor <- function(DT, col) {
#change the column type by reference
DT[, c(col) := factor(DT[[col]])]
invisible(NULL)
}
setFactor(dt, fn)
class(dt[[fn]])
#[1] "factor"
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