[R] Oddity with names

[ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk]

On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, Andrew Robinson wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm using R 1.5.1 on Windows 2000.  The following snippet of code doesn't
> seem to do anything - no error is reported, and there is no name change.
>
> names(myFrame[,c(1:3)]) <- c("name1", "name2", "name3")
>
> This code however works nicely:
>
> names(myFrame)[c(1:3)] <- c("name1", "name2", "name3")
>
> Can anyone suggest why the first doesn't work?  Ought an error be reported?

It does work.  It creates a new object myFrame[,c(1:3)] and changes its
names.  That's not what you wanted, but R is your servant not your master
and does allow you to do such things.

-- 
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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