[R] Minimum and blanks

[joris meys]

The minimum of a character vector is returned according to the unicode
or ascii code values, but I guess that's not what Chris is looking
for.

Chris, please always try to provide a minimal working example of code
to see what is wrong.

Something goes wrong with the input in your example. As Peter
rightfully pointed out, your vector is considered a character vector.
So you need to :

1) replace "" with NA
              e.g. x <-  ifelse(x=='',NA,x)
Better to do something like that when reading in the code.

2) use the argument na.rm : min (x, na.rm=T)

kind regards
Joris

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Peter Ehlers <ehlers at ucalgary.ca> wrote:
> Chris,
>
> What is your definition of the minimum of a *character* vector?
>
>  -Peter Ehlers
>
> Chris Li wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I want to calculate the minimum of a column which contains blanks.
>>
>> R returns "" as the minimum, which is not I want.
>>
>> Is there a way to overcome it?
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>> Chris
>
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