Question

I am using R and I have a data frame like this ( Lot of rows)

 DATE TICKER PERMNO PERMCO   BIDLO ASKHI    PRC CFACPR
1 20060901   ALOG  14198    173 55.8112 57.59 56.440      1
2 20060905   ALOG  14198    173 55.0101 56.48 55.650      1
3 20060906   ALOG  14198    173 55.0200 56.53 55.380      1
4 20060907   ALOG  14198    173 55.1200 57.05 56.360      1
5 20060908   ALOG  14198    173 55.3180 56.98 55.345      1
6 20060911   ALOG  14198    173 54.0000 56.23 56.190      1

I am trying to access the TICKER value of any of rows.
Like this

> data[1,]$TICKER

[1] ALOG
150 Levels:  ACTG ACTL AEIS ALOG ALSC ALTR AMCC AMK AMSC ANAD ARMH ARMHY ARXX ASTSF ASYS ATMI ATML AVNX AXTI BELFA BELFB BRCM CAMD CATT CBMX CECE ... ZRAN

Why do I get the 150 Levels below the actual value. How do I just access the TICKER symbol

Answer 1

Use stringsAsFactor=FALSE, either as an option to read.table() or read.csv(), or as a global setting. If you do, values will be strings.

R> data <- read.table(textConnection(" DATE TICKER PERMNO PERMCO   BIDLO ASKHI    PRC CFACPR
1 20060901   ALOG  14198    173 55.8112 57.59 56.440      1
2 20060905   ALOG  14198    173 55.0101 56.48 55.650      1
3 20060906   ALOG  14198    173 55.0200 56.53 55.380      1
4 20060907   ALOG  14198    173 55.1200 57.05 56.360      1
5 20060908   ALOG  14198    173 55.3180 56.98 55.345      1
6 20060911   ALOG  14198    173 54.0000 56.23 56.190      1"), header=TRUE, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
data <- read.table(textConnection(" DATE TICKER PERMNO PERMCO   BIDLO ASKHI    PRC CFACPR
+ 1 20060901   ALOG  14198    173 55.8112 57.59 56.440      1
+ 2 20060905   ALOG  14198    173 55.0101 56.48 55.650      1
+ 3 20060906   ALOG  14198    173 55.0200 56.53 55.380      1
+ 4 20060907   ALOG  14198    173 55.1200 57.05 56.360      1
+ 5 20060908   ALOG  14198    173 55.3180 56.98 55.345      1
+ 6 20060911   ALOG  14198    173 54.0000 56.23 56.190      1"), header=TRUE, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
R> data[1,"TICKER"]
[1] "ALOG"
R>