[R] Can glmnet handle models with numeric and categorical data?

[Paul Smith]

Dear All,

Can the x matrix in the glmnet() function of glmnet package be a
data.frame with numeric columns and factor columns? I am asking this
because I have a model with both numeric and categorical predictors,
which I would like to study with glmnet. I have already tried to use a
data.frame, but with no success -- as far as I know, the matrix object
can only have data of a single type. Is there some way of
circumventing this problem?

Thanks in advance,

Paul