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It is possible to create a string vector as output when merging factors, by using the as.character() function. Here's an example:

# create two factors
x <- factor(c("red", "green", "blue"))
y <- factor(c("small", "medium", "large"))

# merge the factors and convert to a string vector
z <- as.character(merge(x, y))

# print the result
print(z)
[1] "blue.large"    "green.medium"  "red.small"

In this example, we merge the factors x and y using the merge() function, which combines each level of one factor with each level of the other factor. The resulting factor is then converted to a character vector using as.character(). The resulting vector z contains strings with the form "level1.level2".