[R-pkg-devel] tibbles are not data frames

[Joris Meys]

Here's one difference:

atib <- tibble(a = 1:5, b = letters[5:1])
atib[3,"a"]
as.data.frame(atib)[3,"a"]

The second line returns a tibble (no dropping dimensions), the third line
does (dropping dimensions). Huge difference if you use [ , aColumn] to
select a vector from a data frame.

Cheers
Joris

On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 10:57 AM, Stefan McKinnon Høj-Edwards <sme at iysik.com
> wrote:

> Hi Göran,
>
> Could you please elaborate on which kind of subsetting that Hadley
> dislikes?
> I am yet to encounter operations on data frames that are not possible on
> tribbles.
>
> Kindly,
> Stefan McKinnon Hoj-Edwards
>
> Stefan McKinnon Høj-Edwards
> ph.d. Genetics
> +44 (0)776 231 2464
> +45 2888 6598
> Skype: stefan_edwards
>
> 2017-09-26 8:30 GMT+01:00 Göran Broström <goran.brostrom at umu.se>:
>
> > I am beginning to get complaints from users of my CRAN packages
> > (especially 'eha') to the effect that they get error messages like
> "Error:
> > Unsupported use of matrix or array for column indexing".
> >
> > It turns out that they are sticking in tibbles into functions that expect
> > data frames as input. And I am using the kind of subsetting that Hadley
> > dislikes (eha is an old package, much older than tibbles). It is of
> course
> > a simple matter to change the code so it handles both data frames and
> > tibbles correctly, but this affects many functions, and it will take some
> > time. And when the next guy introduces 'troubles' as an improvement of
> > 'tibbles', I will have to rewrite the code again.
> >
> > While I like Hadley's way of doing it, I think it is a mistake to let a
> > tibble also be of class data frame. To me it is a matter of inheritance
> and
> > backwards compability: A tibble should add nice things to a data frame,
> not
> > change basic behaviour, in order to call itself a data frame.
> >
> > Is it correct to let a tibble be of class "data.frame"?
> >
> > Göran Broström
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-package-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>
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-- 
Joris Meys
Statistical consultant

Ghent University
Faculty of Bioscience Engineering
Department of Mathematical Modelling, Statistics and Bio-Informatics

tel : +32 9 264 59 87
Joris.Meys at Ugent.be
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