[R] help wrapping findInterval into a function

[David Winsemius]

On Dec 6, 2011, at 5:53 PM, Steve E. wrote:

> Bill (and David),
>
> Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my query.
>
> You were right, I was creating and calling the function exactly as  
> you had
> predicted.  I revised the structure based on your suggestion.  It  
> runs but
> the output is an array of the flags that are not attached to the  
> data frame,
> not a new column in the data frame as was my intention.
>
> So, the new configuration I tried was like this (where DataFrame is  
> not a
> real data frame but just the word "DataFrame"):
>
> WQFlags <- function(DataFrame) {DataFrame$CalciumFlag <-  
> with(DataFrame,
> ifelse(variable == "CaD_ICP", (dataqualifier <- c("Y", 'Q', "", "A")
> [findInterval(DataFrame$value, c(-Inf, 0.027, 0.1, 100, Inf))]),""))
> }
>
> I called it using:
>
> WaterQualityData <- WQFlags(WaterQualityData)

Unless you provide either the original data or an unambiguous ( at the  
level the R interpreter would see, not at the level of what you see  
when you print a dataframe) description of your data you will get at  
the very best educated guesses. Use str() or dput().

>
> Again, the output is simply an array of the flags, unattached to a  
> data
> frame.  Can you suggest a way to modify this to make it work as  
> desired, or,
> in the worst case, can I attach the resulting array of flag values?

Do you mean "attach" in the sense of using the R function `attach`? If  
so, then please do not. (And please ignore any advice or the examples  
concerning that issue you might get from reading Crawley's text.)


--

Good night.

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT