[Bioc-devel] 'droplevels' argument in `[` method for SummarizedExperiment?

[Martin Morgan]

On 03/12/2014 03:02 PM, Wolfgang Huber wrote:
> Hi Martin, Mike
>
> a DESeq2 user brought up the observation that when he subsets a ‘DESeqDataSet’ object (the class inherits from ‘SummarizedExperiment’) by samples, he often ends up with unused factor levels in the colData. (Esp. since the subsetting is often to select certain subgroups). Would either of the following two make sense:
>
> - a ‘droplevels’ method for ‘SummarizedExperiment’ that efficiently and conveniently removes unused levels, i.e.
>       x = x[, x$tissue %in% c(“guts”, “brains”)]
>       x = droplevels(x)

vs. x$tissue = droplevels(x$tissue)

> - a ‘droplevels’ argument (default: FALSE)
>       x = x[, x$tissue %in% c(“guts”, “brains”), droplevels=TRUE]

there are a surprising number of places were levels could be dropped -- each 
column of colData, each column of (possibly two levels of) 'mcols' on the row 
data, and the seqlevels of the row data.

Does this make sense lower in the class hierarchy, e.g., Vector, as well as 
GRanges/List?

Martin

>
> Wolfgang
>
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