Deepayan is correct, but note that I() creates a column of class "AsIs",
not "character". We should ask why you want character columns in a data
frame? (Certainly prior to 1.8.0 there is a fair chance that unless they
are of class "AsIs" manipulations would turn them into factors.)
If you really want character columns, the way to do it is underhand:
f <- function() {
a <- list(Int1=1:5,Char1=letters[1:5],Char2=letters[6:10])
attr(a, "row.names") <- 1:5
attr(a, "class") <- "data.frame"
a
}
However, you might consider returning a list.
On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Deepayan Sarkar wrote:
>
> >From ?data.frame:
>
> Character variables passed to 'data.frame' are converted
> to factor columns unless protected by 'I'. If a list or data frame
> or matrix is passed to 'data.frame' it is as if each column had
> been passed as a separate argument.
>
> See the Examples section for an example.
>
> On Tuesday 02 September 2003 17:30, Dutky, Steve wrote:
> > I have a function that manipulates a list of numeric and character
> > components of equal length and wants to return a data.frame.
> >
> > EG,
> >
> > f<-function() {
> > a<-list(Int1=1:5,Char1=letters[1:5],Char2=letters[6:10])
> > b<-data.frame(a)
> > }
> >
> > How can I get the columns Char1, Char2, (...CharN) returned coerced to
> > character and not factor?
> >
> > It appears that I could coerce individual columns by
> > b$CharI<-as.character(b$CharI). Is there a less ugly way of doing this?
>
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>
--
Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
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