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How to change the data type in a column? [message #121]

Thu, 19 November 2015 17:46

jenninaj
Messages: 2
Registered: November 2015

Junior Member

When importing a text file with a column that contains a mix of numbers (e.g. 1500.0, 9.3, etc.) and blanks datawarrior appears to cast this column as text. However, I cannot find a way to change the data type back to numbers and/or how to tell datawarrior during file import time that the column should be treated as numerical.
Am I missing an obvious function/command or is this basic requirement lacking from the current version of DW?
Thanks.

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Re: How to change the data type in a column? [message #122 is a reply to message #121]

Tue, 24 November 2015 21:25

thomas
Messages: 729
Registered: June 2014

Senior Member

The data type is determined automatically. If DataWarrior cannot perceive numerical content, it would not help, if you would declare the column to be numerical. I suggest to clean the data, e.g. with search & replace. If a column contains multiple numerical values, they either need to be in separate lines or they should be delimited by '; '. In your case it may already fix the issue, if you replace ', ' by '; '.

Hope this helps, Thomas

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Re: How to change the data type in a column? [message #125 is a reply to message #122]

Fri, 11 December 2015 16:48

jenninaj
Messages: 2
Registered: November 2015

Junior Member

Thanks. I've confirmed that this occurs when a field in a column contains only numbers but some other fields in the column are blank. I was surprised that based upon the blank/empty fields that DW then interpreted the entire column as text.

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Re: How to change the data type in a column? [message #126 is a reply to message #125]

Sat, 12 December 2015 14:45

thomas
Messages: 729
Registered: June 2014

Senior Member

Empty cells are still considered numerical unless they contain invisible characters, e.g. spaces.

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