Trouble combining double and character - r

Question

I am having trouble merging datasets and am going to merging many together so need to figure out a way to automate getting through the following error:
"Error: Can't combine `C:/Users/gabri/AppData/Local/Cache/R/noaa_lcd/2006_72038163885.csv$HourlyWetBulbTemperature` <double> and `C:/Users/gabri/AppData/Local/Cache/R/noaa_lcd/2009_72038163885.csv$HourlyWetBulbTemperature` <character>."
I have examined the data and see that in one of the files some of the NAs are marked by * so I know that is why the problem is there. I would like to add a command that will convert either all to character or all to numeric so that I can merge but when I try adding as.character I receive this error:
Error: Names repair functions can't return `NA` values
Here is the relevant code I am trying to run which produces the error.
library(rnoaa)
library(tidyverse)
library(fs)
super_big_df <- map_df(my_files, read_csv, col_select = c(1,2,21,32,80), col_types = "cTddd", .id = "file")
Here is the output of dput for the relevant columns of the dataset
structure(list(STATION = c(72038163885, 72038163885, 72038163885
), DATE = structure(c(1230768000, 1230769200, 1230770400), tzone = "UTC", class = c("POSIXct",
"POSIXt")), HourlyWetBulbTemperature = c("*", "38", "37"), DailyAverageWetBulbTemperature = c(NA,
NA, NA), MonthlyWetBulb = c(NA, NA, NA)), row.names = c(NA, -3L
), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"))
structure(list(STATION = c(72038163885, 72038163885, 72038163885
), DATE = structure(c(1146459600, 1146460800, 1146462000), tzone = "UTC", class = c("POSIXct",
"POSIXt")), HourlyWetBulbTemperature = c(NA_real_, NA_real_,
NA_real_), DailyAverageWetBulbTemperature = c(72, NA, NA), MonthlyWetBulb = c(NA,
NA, NA)), row.names = c(NA, -3L), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl",
"data.frame"))
In sum, I am wondering if there is a command I can put in map_df() that will convert everything to be the same (either character or numeric) so that the rest of the command will still run.

Answer 1

Untested, but the best way forward as #GregorThomas suggested is to read it in properly the first time. In this case, it's likely something like:
super_big_df <- map_df(
my_files, read_csv, na = c("", "NA", "*"),
col_select = c(1,2,21,32,80), col_types = "cTddd",
.id = "file")
If you need to fix it after the fact, then you'll need to read them into a list-of-frames, perhaps changing map_df to map,
super_big_df <- map(
my_files, read_csv, na = c("", "NA", "*"),
col_select = c(1,2,21,32,80), col_types = "cTddd",
.id = "file")
bind_rows(super_big_df)
# Error: Can't combine `..1$HourlyWetBulbTemperature` <character> and `..2$HourlyWetBulbTemperature` <double>.
and then something like
library(dplyr) # in case you did not already have it loaded
purrr::map(super_big_df, ~ mutate(., HourlyWetBulbTemperature = suppressWarnings(as.numeric(HourlyWetBulbTemperature)))) %>%
bind_rows()
# # A tibble: 6 x 5
# STATION DATE HourlyWetBulbTemperature DailyAverageWetBulbTemperature MonthlyWetBulb
# <dbl> <dttm> <dbl> <dbl> <lgl>
# 1 72038163885 2009-01-01 00:00:00 NA NA NA
# 2 72038163885 2009-01-01 00:20:00 38 NA NA
# 3 72038163885 2009-01-01 00:40:00 37 NA NA
# 4 72038163885 2006-05-01 05:00:00 NA 72 NA
# 5 72038163885 2006-05-01 05:20:00 NA NA NA
# 6 72038163885 2006-05-01 05:40:00 NA NA NA
The suppressWarnings here is because we know there is a non-number ("*") in that column somewhere. For that one frame, it will fix that column; for other frames, it should be a no-op since the column is already as.numeric.
Note that I hard-coded the name here since we know what it is ahead of time. If there are more columns that need repairing (i.e., you get more errors after fixing this one), then it might be advantageous to go with a more dynamic/programmatic approach (not yet covered here).
Data
super_big_df <- list(
structure(list(STATION = c(72038163885, 72038163885, 72038163885), DATE = structure(c(1230768000, 1230769200, 1230770400), tzone = "UTC", class = c("POSIXct", "POSIXt")), HourlyWetBulbTemperature = c("*", "38", "37"), DailyAverageWetBulbTemperature = c(NA, NA, NA), MonthlyWetBulb = c(NA, NA, NA)), row.names = c(NA, -3L), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame")),
structure(list(STATION = c(72038163885, 72038163885, 72038163885), DATE = structure(c(1146459600, 1146460800, 1146462000), tzone = "UTC", class = c("POSIXct", "POSIXt")), HourlyWetBulbTemperature = c(NA_real_, NA_real_, NA_real_), DailyAverageWetBulbTemperature = c(72, NA, NA), MonthlyWetBulb = c(NA, NA, NA)), row.names = c(NA, -3L), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"))
)