[R] suggestion "suggestion" and dataframe operations

ivo welch ivo.welch at yale.edu
Thu Feb 12 17:39:51 CET 2004


hi chaps:

a simple suggestion:  R tells me who the contributors() are, but this 
should also tell me where I should mail suggestions to.  Is it this 
mailing list?  a repository of suggestions?  an individual?

this came up because i wanted to suggest two small enhancements:

the first is for the summary() method for plain data frames.  it would 
seem to me that the number of "NA"s should be printed as an integer, not 
necessarily in scientific notation.  I have also yet to determine when 
summary() likes to give means and when it does not.  (maybe it was an 
older version that sometimes did not give means).  summary does not seem 
to have optional parameters to specify what statistics I would like. 
this could be useful, too.

another small enhancement:  there are four elementary data frame 
operations that bedevil novices, so they really should have named 
function wrappers:

	delrow( dataframe d, index=45);
	insrow( dataframe d, (row)vector v);
	delcol( dataframe d, "name");
	inscol( dataframe d, (col)vector v);

I looked at my R "bible" (venables&ripley), too, but here too it is not 
as clear as it needs to be.  yes, this may be programmable, but it ain't 
as obvious as it should be for beginners.

regards,

/iaw




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