One thing I notice is that after using subset() on a data frame imported from SPSS, my variable.names attribute disappeared. I guess what I would expect is for a subset() method always to preserve everything but the omitted column.
Cheers David On 27/02/06, Bill Dunlap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, 23 Feb 2006, Peter Dalgaard wrote: > > > "Gabor Grothendieck" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > Try this: > > > > > > subset(iris, select = - Species) > > > > Or, canonically, > > > > nm <- names(iris) > > iris[, nm != "Species" ] > > > > iris[, -match("Species", nm)] > > > > > > > > On 2/22/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > I agree with the submitter that this needs some kind of solution. > > > > Although data.frame[,-12] works, how do I drop a named column (the > > > > most common use case)? (I found this bug while searching for an > > > > answer.) > > That code with match only works if "Species" is actually > a column of iris. If not, your result depends on whether > you have a data.frame (an error) or a matrix (a column > of NA's). > > I found some mail in a 15 year old sent-mail file that suggested > allowing the tag 'except=' on any of the arguments to "[" to > replace/extend the limited negative integer convention. The idea was > that > iris[ except=c(10:20), except=c("Petal.Width","Petal.Length")) ] > would return all rows except 10:20 and all columns except > the ones named. > iris[ except=integer(0), ] > would return all rows of iris, while iris[-integer(0), ] returns > no rows of iris. > > This abuses the tag= notation, but the "[" function doesn't > really support the i= and j= tags that some people expect. > > This would take care of the problem that subset(data.frame,select=-name) > only lets you omit columns. > > The mail had a version of [.data.frame (for Splus 2.1?) that > implemented this, although, if it is to be used it should be > implemented in the most primitive [ code so all methods use it. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Bill Dunlap > Insightful Corporation > bill at insightful dot com > 360-428-8146 > > "All statements in this message represent the opinions of the author and do > not necessarily reflect Insightful Corporation policy or position." > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel