labelled (version 2.12.0)

to_character: Convert input to a character vector

Description

By default, to_character() is a wrapper for base::as.character(). For labelled vector, to_character allows to specify if value, labels or labels prefixed with values should be used for conversion.

Usage

to_character(x, ...)
# S3 method for double
to_character(x, explicit_tagged_na = FALSE, ...)
# S3 method for haven_labelled
to_character(
  x,
  levels = c("labels", "values", "prefixed"),
  nolabel_to_na = FALSE,
  user_na_to_na = FALSE,
  explicit_tagged_na = FALSE,
  ...
)
# S3 method for data.frame
to_character(
  x,
  levels = c("labels", "values", "prefixed"),
  nolabel_to_na = FALSE,
  user_na_to_na = FALSE,
  explicit_tagged_na = FALSE,
  labelled_only = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

x

Object to coerce to a character vector.

...

Other arguments passed down to method.

explicit_tagged_na

should tagged NA be kept?

levels

What should be used for the factor levels: the labels, the values or labels prefixed with values?

nolabel_to_na

Should values with no label be converted to NA?

user_na_to_na

user defined missing values into NA?

labelled_only

for a data.frame, convert only labelled variables to factors?

Details

If some values doesn't have a label, automatic labels will be created, except if nolabel_to_na is TRUE.

When applied to a data.frame, only labelled vectors are converted by default to character. Use labelled_only = FALSE to convert all variables to characters.

Examples

v <- labelled(c(1,2,2,2,3,9,1,3,2,NA), c(yes = 1, no = 3, "don't know" = 9))
to_character(v)
to_character(v, nolabel_to_na = TRUE)
to_character(v, "v")
to_character(v, "p")

df <- data.frame(
  a = labelled(c(1, 1, 2, 3), labels = c(No = 1, Yes = 2)),
  b = labelled(c(1, 1, 2, 3), labels = c(No = 1, Yes = 2, DK = 3)),
  c = labelled(
    c("a", "a", "b", "c"),
    labels = c(No = "a", Maybe = "b", Yes = "c")
  ),
  d = 1:4,
  e = factor(c("item1", "item2", "item1", "item2")),
  f = c("itemA", "itemA", "itemB", "itemB"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

if (require(dplyr)) {
  glimpse(df)
  glimpse(to_character(df))
  glimpse(to_character(df, labelled_only = FALSE))
}