I wrote on another thread (with subject "[ subscripting sometimes loses names"): >I like R's 'automatic' row names. This is a big help working with >huge data frames (and I do this often, at Google). But this doesn't >go far enough; subscripting and other operations sometimes convert the >automatic names to real names, and check/enforce uniqueness, which is >a big waste of time when working with large data frames. I'll comment >more on this in a new thread.
I propose (and have begun writing, in my copious spare time): * an optional argument to data.frame and other data frame creation code * resulting in an attribute added to the data.frame * so that subscripting and other operations on the data frame * always keep artificial row names * do not have to check for unique row names in the result. My current thoughts, comments welcome: Argument name and component name 'dup.row.names' 0 or FALSE or NULL - current, require unique names 1 or TRUE - duplicates allowed (when subscripting etc.) 2 - always automatic (when subscripting etc.) Option "maxRowNames", default say 10^4 Any data frames with more than this have dup.row.names default to 2. The name 'dup.row.names' is for consistency with S+; there the options are NULL, F or T. Tim Hesterberg ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
