tidyr (version 0.5.1)

extract_numeric: Extract numeric component of variable.

Description

This uses a regular expression to strip all non-numeric character from a string and then coerces the result to a number. This is useful for strings that are numbers with extra formatting (e.g. $1,200.34).

Usage

extract_numeric(x)

Arguments

x

A character vector (or a factor).

Examples

extract_numeric("$1,200.34")
extract_numeric("-2%")

# The heuristic is not perfect - it won't fail for things that
# clearly aren't numbers
extract_numeric("-2-2")
extract_numeric("12abc34")