Problem: I have a character vector that is a mix of foot/inchs, m and cm. I am trying to convert them all to cm.
Vector looks something like this:
Height <- c("165", "185", "5'1", "1.88")
Converting the "5'1" was easy (found this piece of code on stackoverlow):
ft_cm <- function (str_ft_inch) {
elem <- as.integer(unlist(strsplit(str_ft_inch, "'")))
inch <- elem[1] * 12 + elem[2]
return(conv_unit(inch, "inch", "cm")) }
Height_converted <- sapply(Height, ft_cm)
> 165 185 5'1 1.88
NA NA 154.94 NA
Now I want to replicate this for the metre "1.88". I have recycled the ft_cm function. This is the new function:
m_cm <- function (str_m_cm) {
elem <- as.integer(unlist(strsplit(str_m_cm, ".")))
cm <- elem[1] * 100 + elem[2]
return(cm)
}
Height_m_to_cm <- sapply(Height, m_cm)
> 165 185 5'1 1.88
NA NA NA NA
I want my desired outcome to be:
Height_converted
> 165 185 5'1 1.88
165 185 154.94 188
I'm not sure why it is having trouble with this. Any help would be appreciated. P.S. This was only a snippet of a much longer character vector.
I think you can just sub the . away (assuming you always have two digits after the decimal point as shown), then grepl for feet, and convert these.
> cnv_unts <- \(x) {
+ x <- sub('\\.', '', x)
+ ft <- grepl('\'', x)
+ x[ft] <- strsplit(x[ft], '\'') |> lapply(type.convert, as.is=TRUE) |>
+ sapply(\(.) sum(.*c(12, 1))*2.54)
+ as.numeric(x)
+ }
> cnv_unts(Height)
[1] 165.00 185.00 154.94 154.94 188.00
Data:
Height <- c("165", "185", "5'1", "5'1", "1.88")