[R] attributes of a data.frame

[Adrian DUSA]

On Monday 21 November 2005 22:41, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> [...snip...]
> Not all dataframes have the variable.labels attribute.  I'm guessing
> you've installed some contributed package to add them, or are importing
> an SPSS datafile using read.spss.  So don't expect varlab() or
> variable.labels() function to be a standard R function.

Aa-haa... of course you are right: I read them via read.spss. I understand. 
Now, just to the sake of it, would it be wrong to make it standard? 
Is there a special reason not to?


> If you want to define it, definitions like this should work (but I can't
> test them):
>
> varlab <- function(foo) attr(foo, "variable.labels")
>
> "varlab<-" <- function(foo, label, value) {
>    attr(foo, "variable.labels")[label] <- value
>    foo
> }
>
> Use them like this:
>
> varlab(x)  # to see the labels
>
> varlab(x, "varname") <- "label"  # to set one
>
> Duncan Murdoch

Thank you for the tip; I'll certainly use it.
Adrian

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Adrian DUSA
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