Can't find my zip codes in TIGER/tigris

Question

(This is my first attempt to use R, so I apologize for any stupidity. Also, please let me know if this is better posted in Stack Overflow.)

I'm trying to use the Microsoft building footprint dataset to make a map of buildings in my city (Cambridge, MA). I'm following this gist as a guide. These lines of code are giving me problems:

options(tigris_class = "sf", tigris_use_cache = TRUE)
zctas_national <- zctas(cb = TRUE)

selected_zip <- zctas_national %>%
filter(ZCTA5CE10 %in% c(02139))

When I try to print(selected_zip), I get nothing back. Or rather, I get a table that looks like this:

[1] ZCTA5CE10  AFFGEOID10 GEOID10    ALAND10    AWATER10   geometry
<0 rows> (or 0-length row.names)

If I replace 02139 with 85308 (the zip from the gist), everything is fine:

  ZCTA5CE10     AFFGEOID10 GEOID10  ALAND10 AWATER10
1     85308 8600000US85308   85308 44254346   872904 

Anyone know what's going on?

Answer 1

Bit of a guess but...

   filter(ZCTA5CE10 %in% c(02139))

will treat that 02139 as a number, drop the leading zero, and look for "2139", which doesn't exist. Try making it into a character value:

   filter(ZCTA5CE10 %in% c("02139"))

If this is your first use of R, go through some R tutorials that only use the base R packages (and dont use all the "tidyverse" packages) to get a sound understanding of the fundamentals like this. Walk before you run!