[Rd] RE: [R] Removing "row.names"

[Thomas Lumley]

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Kurt Hornik wrote:

> >>>>> Thomas Lumley writes:
> 
> > On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Kurt Hornik wrote:
> >> >>>>> Peter Dalgaard BSA writes:
> >> 
> >> > Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik@ci.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
> >> >> names(sampled) <- " "
> >> >> and
> >> >> dimnames(sampled)[[2]] <- " "
> >> >> 
> >> >> happily introduce non-unique variable names in the data frame.
> >> >> 
> >> >> Is the rule that row.names and names must be unique still on?
> >> >> 
> >> >> Argh ...
> >> 
> >> > Splus 3.4 dispatches on dimnames<-, but not on names<- with the
> >> > following curious result:
> >> 
> >> >> d <- data.frame(a=1:3,b=4:6)
> >> >> names(d)<-c(" "," ")
> >> >> d
> >> 
> >> > 1 1 4
> >> > 2 2 5
> >> > 3 3 6
> >> >> dimnames(d)[[1]] <- rep(" ",3)  
> >> > Error in "dimnames<-.data.frame"(d, .A0): column names must be unique
> >> > Dumped
> >> 
> >> > R dispatches similarly, but doesn't check the dimnames in
> >> > dimnames<-.data.frame. It could do so quite easily. Just add 
> >> 
> >> > || any(duplicated(d[[1]])) || any(duplicated(d[[2]]))
> >> 
> >> > at the appropriate spot.
> >> 
> >> Thomas' view about what should be permitted seems to be different.
> 
> > I wouldn't object to making it hard to create duplicated names(), but
> > I think it would be a bad idea to have data.frame() make up unique
> > names if it's given non-unique ones.
> 
> Maybe `check.names' could also be used for uniqueness testing?
> 
> In any case, I think we should specify what *exactly* a data frame is.
>

I think we should specify, and check.names is a logical way to
allow/forbid non-unique columns.  

Having a new class would be messy: logically it shouldn't inherit from
data.frame, data.frame should inherit from it, but that would be a real
pain to set up.

	-thomas


	

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