[Rd] 'data.frame' method for base::rep()

[Liviu Andronic]

Hello David


On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 4:14 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote:
>> x <- data.frame(a = as.Date('2000-01-01'), b=as.Date('2001-01-01'))
>> x$d <- x$a -x$b
>> require(mefa)
>> rep(x, 2)
>           a          b    d
> 1 2000-01-01 2001-01-01 -366
> 2 2000-01-01 2001-01-01 -366
>> str(rep(x,2))
> 'data.frame':   2 obs. of  3 variables:
>  $ a: Date, format:  ...
>  $ b: Date, format:  ...
>  $ d: num  -366 -366   # notice that a difftime object has lost its class
>
Nice catch. Thanks for pointing it out.


> # Whereas using the [rep(. , .) , ] approach does preserve the difftime
> class.
>> str(x[rep(1,2) , ])
> 'data.frame':   2 obs. of  3 variables:
>  $ a: Date, format:  ...
>  $ b: Date, format:  ...
>  $ d:Class 'difftime'  atomic [1:2] -366 -366   # leap year
>  .. ..- attr(*, "units")= chr "days"
>
The above is nice. I wouldn't have thought of it.


> Since that works out of the box with fewer potential side-effects, I am not
> sure a new method is needed.
>
Your solution still seems more like an obscure side-effect of
subsetting than an intuitive feature, in the sense that before trying
it out the average user would probably first turn to base::rep() when
in need to replicate a df, and then (perhaps) to
mefa:::rep.data.frame() (with all the associated confusion and
pitfalls). I would tend to believe that if there is a clean R-ish way
to implement a base::rep.data.frame() it could still be useful.

Best regards
Liviu