I'm not entirely sure what you want, but maybe this does the trick? data.frame.by <- function(data, variables, fun, ...) { if (length(variables) == 0 ) { df <- data.frame(results = 0) df$results <- list(fun(data$value, ...)) return(df) }
sorted <- sort.df(data, variables)[,c(variables), drop=FALSE] duplicates <- duplicated(sorted[,variables, drop=FALSE]) index <- cumsum(!duplicates) results <- by(data, index, fun, ...) cols <- sorted[!duplicates,variables, drop=FALSE] cols$results <- array(results) cols } sort.df <- function(data, vars) { data[do.call("order", data[,vars, drop=FALSE]), ,drop=FALSE] } dataset <- data.frame(gp1 = rep(1:2, c(4,4)), gp2 = rep(1:4, c(2,2,2,2)), value = rnorm(8)) data.frame.by(dataset, c("gp1", "gp2"), function(data) mean(data$value)) data.frame.by(dataset, "gp1", function(data) tapply(data$value, data$gp2, mean)) data.frame.by(dataset, "gp1", function(data) lm(gp2 ~ value, data)) # doesn't print, but everything is there ok (note that the results column will be a list if necessary - this may be a serious abuse of data frames, but I'm not sure and no one replied when I queried the list) Hadley ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel