cat is a data.frame,
so cbind is use for a data.frame

and
?data.frame tell us that:

 Character variables passed to 'data.frame' are converted
     to factor columns unless protected by 'I'.

PS : it is not good ides to call your data.frame cat as there is a cat function.



At 09:19 10/12/2004, michael watson (IAH-C) wrote:
Hi

I'm seeing some "odd" behaviour with cbind().  My code is:

> cat <- read.table("cogs_category.txt", sep="\t", header=TRUE,
quote=NULL, colClasses="character")
> colnames(cat)
[1] "Code"        "Description"
> is.factor(cat$Code)
[1] FALSE
> is.factor(cat$Description)
[1] FALSE
> is.factor(rainbow(nrow(cat)))
[1] FALSE
> cat <- cbind(cat,"Color"=rainbow(nrow(cat)))
> is.factor(cat$Color)
[1] TRUE
> ?cbind

I read a text file in which has two columns, Code and Description.
Neither of these are factors.  I want to add a column of colours to the
data frame using rainbow().  The rainbow function also does not return a
factor.  However, if I cbind my data frame (which has no factors in it)
and the results of rainbow() (which is a vector, not a factor), then for
some reason the new column is a factor...??

Mick


Michael Watson Head of Informatics Institute for Animal Health, Compton Laboratory, Compton, Newbury, Berkshire RG20 7NN UK

Phone : +44 (0)1635 578411 ext. 2535
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