as.character2 {chinese.misc}

An Enhanced Version of as.character

Description

This function manages to coerce one or more objects into a character vector. Unlike as.character, this function can handle data frames, lists and recursive lists (lists of lists), even when there are factor objects inside data frames and lists. If there is any NULL object in a list, as.character2 will coerce that element into character(0) rather than the character "NULL", which is what as.character does. When the object is of class matrix or data frame, the function will open it by column. The order of characters in result manages to keep accordance with that of the input object.

Usage

as.character2(...)

Arguments

...

one or more objects to be coerced.

Value

a character vector

Examples

as.character2(NULL, NULL)
# Try a list of NULLs
null_list <- list(a = NULL, b = NULL, c = NULL)
# Compare the different results of as.character 
# and as.character2. In fact, we usually 
# want the latter one.
as.character(null_list)
as.character2(null_list)
# Try a list with a data frame in it
df <- data.frame(matrix(c(66,77,NA,99), nrow = 2))
l <- list(a = 1:4, b = factor(c(10,20,NA, 30)), c = c('x', 'y', NA, 'z'), d = df)
as.character2(l)
# Try a list of lists
l2 <- list(l, l, cha = c('a', 'b', 'c'))
as.character2(l2)