<div dir="ltr">Hello All,<div><br></div><div>I am trying to create a character variable in my data table so that it is *atleast* 6 characters long.</div><div>The last line seems to be going wrong.</div><div><br></div><div>Please advise. Reproducible code below</div><div><br></div><div><div>require("data.table")</div><div>value <- sample(seq(60:1000),100) #Random data</div><div>dt <- as.data.table(value)</div><div>dt[,value:=as.character(value)] #Cast as character</div><div>dt[, value_MISSINGDIGITS:=6-nchar(value)] #Check for # of characters missing</div><div>dt[, value_MISSINGDIGITS:=value_MISSINGDIGITS*(value_MISSINGDIGITS>0)] #Handle negative values</div><div><br></div><div># This works till here!</div><div># The missing character count works correctly above</div><div><br></div><div># The below fails. I am trying to generate dummy 0s to fill the missing characters. The values do not get generated accurately</div><div>dt[,value_MISSINGPART:=substr("000000",0,value_MISSINGDIGITS)]</div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div>> sessionInfo()</div><div>R version 3.1.2 (2014-10-31)</div><div>Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)</div><div><br></div><div>locale:</div><div>[1] C</div><div><br></div><div>attached base packages:</div><div>[1] stats   graphics  grDevices utils   datasets  methods  base    </div><div><br></div><div>other attached packages:</div><div> [1] fractalrock_1.1.0  quantmod_0.4-0    TTR_0.22-0      xts_0.9-7      zoo_1.7-11      Defaults_1.1-1    </div><div> [7] futile.logger_1.3.7 futile.any_1.3.0   lambda.r_1.1.6    timeDate_3011.99   lubridate_1.3.3   data.table_1.9.4   </div><div><br></div><div>loaded via a namespace (and not attached):</div><div> [1] Rcpp_0.11.3      chron_2.3-45     digest_0.6.4     futile.options_1.0.0 grid_3.1.2      </div><div> [6] lattice_0.20-29    memoise_0.2.1     plyr_1.8.1      reshape2_1.4     stringr_0.6.2     </div><div>[11] tools_3.1.2   </div></div></div>