How to add leading zeros?

Question

I have a set of data which looks something like this:

anim <- c(25499,25500,25501,25502,25503,25504)
sex  <- c(1,2,2,1,2,1)
wt   <- c(0.8,1.2,1.0,2.         


        

Answer 1

For a general solution that works regardless of how many digits are in data$anim, use the sprintf function. It works like this:

sprintf("%04d", 1)
# [1] "0001"
sprintf("%04d", 104)
# [1] "0104"
sprintf("%010d", 104)
# [1] "0000000104"

In your case, you probably want: data$anim <- sprintf("%06d", data$anim)