[R] cbind() and factors.

[Gabor Grothendieck]

michael watson (IAH-C <michael.watson <at> bbsrc.ac.uk> writes:

: 
: Hi
: 
: I'm seeing some "odd" behaviour with cbind().  My code is:
: 
: > cat <- read.table("cogs_category.txt", sep="\t", header=TRUE,
: quote=NULL, colClasses="character")
: > colnames(cat)
: [1] "Code"        "Description"
: > is.factor(cat$Code)
: [1] FALSE
: > is.factor(cat$Description)
: [1] FALSE
: > is.factor(rainbow(nrow(cat)))
: [1] FALSE
: > cat <- cbind(cat,"Color"=rainbow(nrow(cat)))
: > is.factor(cat$Color)
: [1] TRUE
: > ?cbind
: 
: I read a text file in which has two columns, Code and Description.
: Neither of these are factors.  I want to add a column of colours to the
: data frame using rainbow().  The rainbow function also does not return a
: factor.  However, if I cbind my data frame (which has no factors in it)
: and the results of rainbow() (which is a vector, not a factor), then for
: some reason the new column is a factor...??

Others have already explained the problem and given what is likely
the best solution but here is one other idea, just in case.

You may require a data frame depending on what you want to do but
if you don't then you could alternately use a character matrix
since that won't result in any conversions to factor.

Lets call the data frame from read.table, Cat.df, and our 
matrix, Cat.m.  cat is not wrong but its confusing 
since there is a common R function called cat.  Now we can 
write the following and don't have to worry about factors:

Cat.df <- read.table(...)
# create a character matrix and cbind Colors to it
Cat.m <- cbind(as.matrix(Cat.df), Color = rainbow(nrow(Cat.df)))

If you do find you need a data frame later you can convert it back
like this:

Cat.df <- as.data.frame(Cat.m)
Cat.df[] <- Cat.m  # clobber factors with character data