Whoops, it looks like there's a typo in ?cbind (R version 2.6.0 Patched (2007-10-11 r43143)), and I blindly copied it into my message.
That should read (emphasis added): "and convert character columns to factors unless stringsAsFactors = ***FALSE***" Here's an example: > x <- data.frame(X=1:3) > sapply(cbind(x, letters[1:3]), class) X letters[1:3] "integer" "factor" > sapply(cbind(x, letters[1:3], stringsAsFactors=FALSE), class) X letters[1:3] "integer" "character" > Thanks to Mark Leeds for pointing that out to me in a private message! (I see this still in the source at https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/base/man/cbind.Rd -- is that the right place to look for the latest source to make sure it hasn't been fixed already?) -- Tony Plate Tony Plate wrote: > From ?cbind: > > Data frame methods > The cbind data frame method is just a wrapper for data.frame(..., > check.names = FALSE). This means that it will split matrix columns in data > frame arguments, and convert character columns to factors unless > stringsAsFactors = TRUE is passed. > > (I'm guessing 'spectrum' is a data.frame before the code fragment you've > shown) > > hope this helps, > > Tony Plate > > Johannes Graumann wrote: >> Why is class(spectrum[["Ion"]]) after this "factor"? >> >> spectrum <- cbind(spectrum,Ion=rep("", >> nrow(spectrum)),Deviation.AMU=rep(0.0, nrow(spectrum))) >> >> slowly going crazy ... >> >> Joh >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-help@r-project.org mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >> > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.