[R] Creating a data.frame

[(Ted Harding)]

On 13-Feb-08 22:17:32, Joe Trubisz wrote:
> OK...newbie question here.
> Either I'm reading the docs wrong, or I'm totally confused.
> Given the following:
> 
> x<-c("aaa","bbb","ccc")
> y<-rep(0,3)
> z<-rep(0,3)
> 
> is.character(x)
> [1] TRUE
> 
> is.numeric(y)
> [1] TRUE
> 
> Now...I want to create a data frame, but keep the data types.
> In reading the docs, I assume you do it this way:
> 
> d<-data.frame(cbind(x=I(x),y=y,z=z)
> 
> But, when I do str(d), I get the following:
> 
> 'data.frame': 3 obs. of  3 variables:
>   $ x: Factor w/ 3 levels "aaa","bbb","ccc": 1 2 3
>   $ y: Factor w/ 1 level "0": 1 1 1
>   $ z: Factor w/ 1 level "0": 1 1 1
> 
> I thought the I() prevents character from becoming factors, right?
> Secondly, how do I force y and z in the data frame to become numeric?
> 
> Thanks in advance
> Joe

You don't need to force it! It's not obvious what made you
think of using cbind() internally, but it doesn't do what
you intended. Simply:

  d<-data.frame(x=I(x),y=y,z=z)
  d
#     x y z
# 1 aaa 0 0
# 2 bbb 0 0
# 3 ccc 0 0
  str(d)
# 'data.frame':   3 obs. of  3 variables:
#  $ x:Class 'AsIs'  chr [1:3] "aaa" "bbb" "ccc"
#  $ y: num  0 0 0
#  $ z: num  0 0 0

The trouble was that cbind(x=I(x),y=y,z=z) makes a matrix,
and you cannot mix types in a matrix, so this will coerce
all the variables to character type. So it's your original
way which does the forcing!

Hoping this helps,
Ted.



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Date: 13-Feb-08                                       Time: 23:24:30
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