Actually, I think it's ?data.frame that he should read.
The salient points are that:
1. All data frames must have unique row names. If not provided, they
are produced. Row numbers **are** row names.
2. The return value of read methods are data frames.
-- Bert
On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 11:05 AM, David L Carlson <dcarl...@tamu.edu> wrote:
> Try help("read.delim") - always a good strategy before using a function for
> the first time:
>
> In it, you will find: "Using row.names = NULL forces row numbering. Missing
> or NULL row.names generate row names that are considered to be 'automatic'
> (and not preserved by as.matrix)."
>
> ----------------------------------------------
> David L Carlson
> Associate Professor of Anthropology
> Texas A&M University
> College Station, TX 77843-4352
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces@r-
>> project.org] On Behalf Of Ed Siefker
>> Sent: Monday, June 04, 2012 12:47 PM
>> To: r-help@r-project.org
>> Subject: [R] Why do I have a column called row.names?
>>
>> I'm trying to read in a tab separated table with read.delim().
>> I don't particularly care what the row names are.
>> My data file looks like this:
>>
>>
>> start stop Symbol Insert sequence Clone End Pair FISH
>> 203048 67173930 ABC8-43024000D23 TI:993812543
>> TI:993834585
>> 255176 87869359 ABC8-43034700N15 TI:995224581
>> TI:995237913
>> 1022033 1060472 ABC27-1253C21 TI:2094436044 TI:2094696079
>> 1022033 1061172 ABC23-1388A1 TI:2120730727 TI:2121592459
>>
>>
>>
>> I have to do something with row.names because my first column has
>> duplicate entries. So I read in the file like this:
>>
>> > BACS<-read.delim("testdata.txt", row.names=NULL, fill=TRUE)
>> > head(BACS)
>> row.names start stop Symbol Insert.sequence
>> Clone.End.Pair
>> 1 203048 67173930 ABC8-43024000D23 NA TI:993812543
>> TI:993834585
>> 2 255176 87869359 ABC8-43034700N15 NA TI:995224581
>> TI:995237913
>> 3 1022033 1060472 ABC27-1253C21 NA TI:2094436044
>> TI:2094696079
>> 4 1022033 1061172 ABC23-1388A1 NA TI:2120730727
>> TI:2121592459
>> FISH
>> 1 NA
>> 2 NA
>> 3 NA
>> 4 NA
>>
>>
>> Why is there a column named "row.names"? I've tried a few different
>> ways of invoking this, but I always get the first column named
>> row.names,
>> and the rest of the columns shifted by one.
>>
>> Obviously I could fix this by using row.names<-, but I'd like to
>> understand
>> why this happens. Any insight?
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help@r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-
>> guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
--
Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics
Internal Contact Info:
Phone: 467-7374
Website:
http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm
______________________________________________
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and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
