[R] attributes of a data.frame

Adrian DUSA dusa.adrian at gmail.com
Mon Nov 21 20:18:54 CET 2005


Dear all,

I noticed that a data.frame has four attributes:
- names
- row.names
- class
- variable.labels

While one can use the first three (i.e. names(foo) or class(foo)), the fourth 
one can only be used via:
attributes(foo)$variable.labels
(which is kind of a tedious thing to type)

Is it or would be possible to simply use:
variable.labels(foo)
like the first three attributes?

I tried:
varlab <- function(x) attributes(x)$variable.labels

but then I cannot use this to assign a specific label:
> varlab(foo)[1] <- "some string"
Error: couldn't find function "varlab<-"

Thank you,
Adrian

-- 
Adrian DUSA
Romanian Social Data Archive
1, Schitu Magureanu Bd
050025 Bucharest sector 5
Romania
Tel./Fax: +40 21 3126618 \
          +40 21 3120210 / int.101




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