[R] difference between "names", "colnames" and "dimnames"

[Don MacQueen]

I think your problem is with plotting, not with naming.
Tell the list what kind of plot you're doing 
(with example code, of course) and where you need 
to see names on the plot.

  (What do you have in mind when you say names for 
the "whole" matrix? There are row names, and 
column names, and that's about it.)

-Don

At 6:08 PM -0500 6/30/09, Germán Bonilla wrote:
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>Hi all...
>
>I built a matrix binding vectors with rbind, and have something like this:
>
>         [,1]     [,2]    [,3]     [,4]     [,5]     [,6]      [,7]     [,8]
>CLS 3.877328 4.087636 4.72089 4.038361 3.402942 2.786285  2.671222 3.276419
>ORD      NaN      NaN     NaN      NaN 5.770780 5.901113 11.888054 7.934823
>FAM      NaN      NaN     NaN      NaN      NaN 3.699455  4.551196 2.885390
>GEN      NaN      NaN     NaN      NaN      NaN 3.967411  4.390296 2.885390
>SPP      NaN      NaN     NaN      NaN      NaN      NaN       NaN 2.885390
>
>Then I tried to assign names to each column with names(), but end up with
>the following:
>
>>  names(tester) <-
>c("uno","dos","tres","cuatro","cinco","seis","siete","ocho")
>
>         [,1]     [,2]    [,3]     [,4]     [,5]     [,6]      [,7]     [,8]
>CLS 3.877328 4.087636 4.72089 4.038361 3.402942 2.786285  2.671222 3.276419
>ORD      NaN      NaN     NaN      NaN 5.770780 5.901113 11.888054 7.934823
>FAM      NaN      NaN     NaN      NaN      NaN 3.699455  4.551196 2.885390
>GEN      NaN      NaN     NaN      NaN      NaN 3.967411  4.390296 2.885390
>SPP      NaN      NaN     NaN      NaN      NaN      NaN       NaN 2.885390
>attr(,"names")
>  [1] "uno"    "dos"    "tres"   "cuatro" "cinco"  "seis"   "siete"  "ocho"
>  [9] NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA
>[17] NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA
>[25] NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA
>[33] NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA       NA
>
>I can use colnames(tester), but then I cannot identify the colnames on the
>points when I plot them.
>
>How can I set the names(tester) for the whole matrix?
>
>Thanks a lot.
>
>Germán,
>UNAM
>
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>
>
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-- 
--------------------------------------
Don MacQueen
Environmental Protection Department
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Livermore, CA, USA
925-423-1062