[R] Value lables, variable lables

Prof Brian Ripley ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Wed Nov 28 19:16:28 CET 2001


We've been here before, so check the archives.

Aren't they labels, not lables?

R can use sensible names directly.  In particular, given S/R has factors,
I don't see that `variable lables' add anything:

gender <- factor(c(0,1,1), labels=c("Male", "Female"))

seems all you need.

There are also comment attributes in R:

VAR001 <- gender
comment(VAR001) <- "Gender of Respondent"

which might play the role of "variable lable" if you really can't use
meaningful names.


On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, Paul E Johnson wrote:

> I'm looking for an analogy to SPSS and "variable lable" and "value
> lable" in R. I have a copy of S+4.0 and can't find any info in their
> docs, and don't find it in R-intro either.
>
>
> In SPSS, for each variable, there is a name like
>
> VAR001
>
> and a variable lable (a longer descriptive string) like
>
> Respondent ID
>
> and for many of the values of other variables there are value lables.
> For example, VAR008 has the lable
>
> GENDER of Respondent
>
> and it has values of 0 and 1, and the values are labled
>
> 0   Male
> 1   Female
>
> Sometimes value lables are much longer strings.
>
> Whenever a person runs a model in SPSS, the printout automatically finds
> the lable and prints it along with the variable name and the values are
> replaced by their lables.
>
> In R, does one keep a list of variable lables and value lables? If so,
> where?  It seems to me that an R collection type like Map or Hash would
> be needed so one could put in a variable name and get back a lable.
>
> --
> Paul E. Johnson                       email: pauljohn at ukans.edu
> Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn
> University of Kansas                  Office: (785) 864-9086
> Lawrence, Kansas 66045                FAX: (785) 864-5700
>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
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 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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