[R] understanding the no-label concept

[David Winsemius]

On Oct 11, 2014, at 1:04 PM, Richard M. Heiberger wrote:

> It looks like a terminology issue.  R has names for elements of a
> vector and for rows and
> columns of a matrix or data.frame, and more generally for all
> dimensions of multi-dimensional array.
> 
> I think your next step is to read the introductory document.
> Start with either of these (they are the same content)
> system.file("../../doc/manual/R-intro.html")
> system.file("../../doc/manual/R-intro.pdf")
> 
> For the specific situations you described, here are examples.
> 
> aa <- 1:5
> names(aa) <- letters[1:5]
> aa
> names(aa) <- c("ABC","DEF","GHI","LMN","OPQ")
> aa
> 
> bb <- matrix(1:12, 3, 4, dimnames=list(letters[1:3], LETTERS[1:4]))
> bb
> 
> ## install.packages("Hmisc") ## if you don't have it yet
> library(Hmisc)
> latex(bb)

Hmisc also has a labeling facility and mechanisms for importing SAS labels. (I don't know if importation of SPSS labels is supported.) Hmisc::label uses the capacity of R to attach attributes to data-objects. So pay particular attention to the introductory material that Richard (and  Bert Gunther) refer you to in the area of "attributes", and read ?Hmisc::label (after installing that package.)

-- 
David.

> 
> Rich
> 
> 
> On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 1:17 PM,  <moonkid at posteo.org> wrote:
>> I am new to R but a bit familiar with Stata and SPSS and a software dev.
>> 
>> As I understand it right, there is no possibility to give variables or
>> values a lable. Is that right?
>> 
>> Just for example. "x" need a name. And the four values (1, 2, 3, 4)
>> need it to.
>> 
>> [code]
>>> table(x)
>> 
>> 1  2  3  4
>> 17  6  6  2
>> [/code]
>> 
>> I understand that R itself is powerful and well developed. So I try to
>> understand why it doesn't support labels.
>> 
>> And in the next step I try to understand how do you work with your data
>> and publish (e.g. with *TeX) it without using labels? R can put out
>> *TeX-code, right? I don't want to modify the outputted code manually. It
>> would waste my time and decreases my efficiency.
> 


David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA