[R] Comparison of numeric and character vectors

[John Fox]

Dear Ista,

This is a consequence of coercion of the numbers to character:

> c("Z", "a", 999, Inf)
[1] "Z"   "a"   "999" "Inf"

> sort(c("Z", "a", 999, Inf))
[1] "999" "a"   "Inf" "Z"  

I hope this helps,
 John

On Tue, 3 Jan 2012 17:56:29 -0500
 Ista Zahn <istazahn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I just discovered that R considers characters to be really big:
> 
> > "a" > 999
> [1] TRUE
> > "a" > 9e307
> [1] TRUE
> > "a" > 9e308
> [1] FALSE
> 
> and that some characters are literally infinitely big:
> 
> > "Z" >= Inf
> [1] TRUE
> 
> although not all:
> 
> > "a" > Inf
> [1] FALSE
> 
> 
> This came as a surprise to me (although it is quite possibly a trivial
> issue), and I'd appreciate any information about why R considers
> character vectors to even be comparable to numeric vectors, and why it
> considers characters to have very large values.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Ista
> 
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