[R] problems creating data frames

[Gabor Grothendieck]

This was just discussed this week:

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2008-March/157082.html

On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 5:01 PM, Will Holcomb <wholcomb at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am having two problems creating data frames that I have solutions, but
> they really seem like kludges and I assume I just don't understand the
> proper R way of doing things.
>
> The first situation is I have an set of uneven data vectors. When I try to
> use them to create a data frame I would like the bottoms of them padded with
> NAs, without explicitly specifying that. When I do:
>
> anxiety.data = data.frame(Behavior_Therapy = c(6, 7, 6, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 6,
> 6, 7),
>                          Atenolol = c(4, 8, 10, 3, 6, 5, 6, 3, 7, 5, 4, 6),
>                          Placebo = c(0, 7, 0, 7, 0, 7))
>
> It duplicates the values for Placebo twice. I can correct this by doing:
>
> anxiety.data = data.frame(Behavior_Therapy = c(6, 7, 6, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 6,
> 6, 7),
>                          Atenolol = c(4, 8, 10, 3, 6, 5, 6, 3, 7, 5, 4, 6),
>                          Placebo = c(c(0, 7, 0, 7, 0, 7), rep(NA, 6)))
>
> But this requires me to look at the length of the vectors and explicitly pad
> them. Is there a method to say, "create a data frame and any vectors that
> are too short should be padded with NAs"?
>
> My second situation has to do with the names of columns. When I do:
>
> rat.data = data.frame("S+/P+" = c(25,23,18,16,12,19,20,21),
>                      "S+/P-" = c(18,17,16,11,14,15,21,12),
>                      "S-/P+" = c(20,12,15,13,8,17,17,18),
>                      "S-/P-" = c(12,15,17,10,18,10,9,14))
>
> I end up with the column names: S..P., S..P..1, S..P..2, and S..P..3. If I
> rename them using:
>
> names(rat.data) = c("S+/P+", "S+/P-", "S-/P+", "S-/P-")
>
> Then I get them named what I attempted to name them initially. Is there some
> way to just have them named what I attempted to name them in the first
> place? I don't really know why they're being renamed since the names are
> valid, so I'm not really sure what to try to find to correct the naming.
>
> Will
>
>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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