[R] Setting NA to blank

[(Ted Harding)]

John Kane's reply sums it up! (Though you could use "",
instead of " ", which would give you an "empty string"
instead of the "space" character; but the resulting
matrix would still consist entirely of "character"
elements).

However, the real reason I am following up is to ask
why you want the blank instead of the NA.

If it is just for printing out or display, then the
fact that the matrix has been converted to character
probably does not matter.

But if it is for compatibility with some other
computational software that (e.g.) expects missing
values to be represented by a blank, or some "null"
representation, then it may not be so straightforward.

So, if that might be an issue, please describe for us
how you intend to use the result.

Ted.

On 09-May-11 19:56:39, Dat Mai wrote:
> Thank you kind sir!
> 
> On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 3:25 PM, John Kane <jrkrideau at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> 
>>
>> (mat <- matrix(c(1,2,3,NA),2))
>> mat[is.na(mat)]   <- " "
>> mat
>>
>> But if you have a numerical matrix it coverts the matrix to character.
>>
>> --- On Mon, 5/9/11, Dat Mai <dat.d.mai at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > From: Dat Mai <dat.d.mai at gmail.com>
>> > Subject: [R]  Setting NA to blank
>> > To: r-help at r-project.org
>> > Received: Monday, May 9, 2011, 2:46 PM
>> > Hey All,
>> >
>> > I have a matrix m, and I wish to set all the NA values to
>> > blank. How would I
>> > do so?
>> >
>> > --
>> > Best,
>> > Dat Mai
>> > PhD Rotation Student
>> > Albert Einstein College of Medicine

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Date: 09-May-11                                       Time: 21:21:07
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