[Rd] Bug in subsetting data frame (PR#13515)

[Thomas Lumley]

On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 xinlee883 at stat.math.ethz.ch wrote:

>
> I discover annoying bug in subsetting data frame.  Here is reproducable
> examples:

These are not bugs.

>> data.frame <- data.frame(x = runif(5), y = runif(5), row.names =
> c('a','b','c','d','e')
>
>> subset <- data.frame['x']
>> subset['a',]
> work
>
>> subset <- data.frame$x
>> subset['a',]
> not work

This can't possibly work, since you have explicitly requested that subset not be a data frame.

There has been recent discussion about whether row names should be added as names to vectors from a data frame, in which case subset['a'] would then work. It doesn't now, and that isn't a bug either.

>> subset <- data.frame['a',]
>> subset[,'x']
> work
>
>> subset <- data.frame[,'x']
>> subset['a',]
> not work

This is also not a bug.  The drop= option to [ controls what happens when the subset has dimensions of length 1. If you want subset to be a data frame in this context, use
   subset <- data.frame[,'x',drop=FALSE]
and then subset['a',] will do want you want.

        -thomas

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle