Aliases: character as.character as.character.default as.character.factor is.character
### ** Examples form <- y ~ a + b + c as.character(form) ## length 3
[1] "~" "y" "a + b + c"
deparse(form) ## like the input
[1] "y ~ a + b + c"
a0 <- 11/999 # has a repeating decimal representation (a1 <- as.character(a0))
[1] "0.011011011011011"
format(a0, digits = 16) # shows one more digit
[1] "0.01101101101101101"
a2 <- as.numeric(a1) a2 - a0 # normally around -1e-17
[1] -1.040834e-17
as.character(a2) # normally different from a1
[1] "0.011011011011011"
print(c(a0, a2), digits = 16)
[1] 0.01101101101101101 0.01101101101101100