adjustUnitPrefix: Adjust Value With Different Decimal Prefixes To Single Prefix Plus Unit

Description

This function provides help converting values with with different unit-prefixes to a single prefix-unit type. This can be used to convert a vector of mixed prefixes like 'p' and 'n'. Any text to the right of the unit will be ignored.

Usage

adjustUnitPrefix(
  x,
  pref = c("z", "a", "f", "p", "n", "u", "m", "", "k", "M", "G"),
  unit = "sec",
  sep = c("_", ".", " ", ""),
  minTrimNChar = 0,
  returnType = c("NAifInvalid", "allText"),
  silent = FALSE,
  debug = FALSE,
  callFrom = NULL
)

Value

This function returns a character vector (same length as input) with adjusted unified decimal prefix and adjusted numeric content, the numeric content only is also giben in the names of the output

Arguments

x: (character) vector containing digit uunit-prefix and unit terms
pref: (character) multiplicative unit-prefixes, assumes as increasing factors of 1000
unit: (character) unit name, the numeric part may be sepatated by one space-character
sep: (character) separator characters that may appear between integer numeric value and unit description
minTrimNChar: (integer) min number of text characters when trimming adjacent text on left and right of main numeric+prefix+unit
returnType: (character) set options for retuning results : 'NAifInvalid' .. return NA for invalid parts,'allText' .. return initial text if problem, 'trim'
silent: (logical) suppress messages
debug: (logical) additional messages for debugging
callFrom: (character) allow easier tracking of messages produced

Details

The aim of this function if to allow adjusting a vector containing '100pMol' and '1nMol' to '100pMol' and '1000pMol' for better downstream analysis. Please note that the current version recognizes and converts only interger values; decimals or scientific writing won't be recognized properly. The resultant numeric vector expresses all values as lowest prefix unit level. In case of invalid entries NAs will be returned.

Please note that decimal/comma digits will not be recognized properly, since the function will consider (by default) the decimal sign as just another separator.

To avoid special characters (which may not work on all operating-systems) the letter 'u' is used for 'micro'.

Examples

Run this code

adjustUnitPrefix(c("2.psec abc","20 fsec etc"), unit="sec")

x1 <- c("50_amol", "5_fmol","250_amol","100_amol", NA, "500_amol", "500_amol", "1_fmol")
adjustUnitPrefix(x1, unit="mol")                   

x2 <- c("abCc 500_nmol ABC", "abEe5_umol", "", "abFF_100_nmol_G", "abGg 2_mol", "abH.1 mmol")
rbind( adjustUnitPrefix(x2, unit="mol", returnType="allText") , 
  adjustUnitPrefix(x2, unit="mol", returnType="trim"),
  adjustUnitPrefix(x2, unit="mol", returnType=""))