implementing data.table subsetting and column type coercion in R 4.3
Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy. I'm currently experiencing issues with subsetting a `data.table` in R 4.3, specifically when trying to subset based on a character column that I believe should be coerced to a factor. When executing the following code, I'm getting unexpected results: ```r library(data.table) dt <- data.table(id = 1:5, category = c('A', 'B', 'A', 'C', 'B')) # Attempt to coerce category to factor and subset result <- dt[category == 'A'] # This works fine # Now I try to add a subset for a factor that doesn't exist try_result <- dt[category == factor('C')] print(try_result) ``` The output for `try_result` is empty, which I wasn't expecting because 'C' exists in the original `category` column. When I checked the structure of `dt`, I found that `category` is still a character type: ```r str(dt) ``` Is there a specific way to ensure that `category` gets coerced to a factor before performing the subset? I've also tried using `as.factor()` directly in the subset condition like this: ```r try_result <- dt[as.factor(category) == 'C'] ``` But it still returns zero rows. Could someone clarify what's going wrong here? Is this a known scenario with `data.table`, or am I missing a step in the coercion process? Any insights would be greatly appreciated! I'm on Windows 10 using the latest version of R. Could someone point me to the right documentation?