[Rd] PR#6614

[David Hugh-Jones]

One thing I notice is that after using subset() on a data frame
imported from SPSS, my variable.names attribute disappeared. I guess
what I would expect is for a subset() method always to preserve
everything but the omitted column.

Cheers
David

On 27/02/06, Bill Dunlap <bill at insightful.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2006, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
>
> > "Gabor Grothendieck" <ggrothendieck at gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > > Try this:
> > >
> > >  subset(iris, select = - Species)
> >
> > Or, canonically,
> >
> > nm <- names(iris)
> > iris[, nm != "Species" ]
> >
> > iris[, -match("Species", nm)]
> >
> > >
> > > On 2/22/06, davidhughjones at gmail.com <davidhughjones at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > I agree with the submitter that this needs some kind of solution.
> > > > Although data.frame[,-12] works, how do I drop a named column (the
> > > > most common use case)? (I found this bug while searching for an
> > > > answer.)
>
> That code with match only works if "Species" is actually
> a column of iris.  If not, your result depends on whether
> you have a data.frame (an error) or a matrix (a column
> of NA's).
>
> I found some mail in a 15 year old sent-mail file that suggested
> allowing the tag 'except=' on any of the arguments to "[" to
> replace/extend the limited negative integer convention.  The idea was
> that
>     iris[ except=c(10:20), except=c("Petal.Width","Petal.Length")) ]
> would return all rows except 10:20 and all columns except
> the ones named.
>     iris[ except=integer(0), ]
> would return all rows of iris, while iris[-integer(0), ] returns
> no rows of iris.
>
> This abuses the tag= notation, but the "[" function doesn't
> really support the i= and j= tags that some people expect.
>
> This would take care of the problem that subset(data.frame,select=-name)
> only lets you omit columns.
>
> The mail had a version of [.data.frame (for Splus 2.1?) that
> implemented this, although, if it is to be used it should be
> implemented in the most primitive [ code so all methods use it.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Bill Dunlap
> Insightful Corporation
> bill at insightful dot com
> 360-428-8146
>
>  "All statements in this message represent the opinions of the author and do
>  not necessarily reflect Insightful Corporation policy or position."
>