[Rd] Col.names parameter in write.csv (PR#10411)

[ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk]

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007, Peter Dalgaard wrote:

> kingsley.oteng-amoako at macquarie.com wrote:
>> Full_Name: Kingsley Oteng-Amoako
>> Version: 2.5.1
>> OS: Windows 5.1.2600 (Windows XP)
>> Submission from: (NULL) (203.185.215.144)
>>
>>
>> The col.names=false in the write.csv command does not work as documented.
>> Attempting to write a vector to a csv file without column headers does not work
>> as documented.
>>
>> The col.names=false feature on the write.table command does however work and it
>> can thus be coerced into behaving like the write.csv command - which suggests
>> that there is  a simple error with the write.csv command code.
>>
> No, this is exacly as documented:
>
>
>    'write.csv' and 'write.csv2' provide convenience wrappers for
>     writing CSV files.  They set 'sep', 'dec' and 'qmethod', and
>     'col.names' to 'NA' if 'row.names = TRUE' and 'TRUE' otherwise.
> .....
>     These wrappers are deliberately inflexible: they are designed to
>     ensure that the correct conventions are used to write a valid
>     file. Attempts to change 'col.names', 'sep', 'dec' or 'qmethod'
>     are ignored, with a warning.
>
> (I forget whether the warning bit is new in 2.6.x, though)

It is unchanged since June 2005, and appeared in this form in R 2.2.0.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
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