As I understand it rownames(aa) returns a copy of an attribute of aa. So
changing the value of this vector should make the change to the copy of the
row.names attribute. I would then have to set the original row.names equal to
this copy to effect the change.
So my question is why "rownames(aa)[2:4] <-" changes the original attribute
rather than its copy?
And the follow on question is whether it's possible to have "f(x)[2:4] <-"
operate in the same way for some user defined replacement function f.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jul 10, 2013, at 3:05 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsem...@comcast.net> wrote:
On Jul 10, 2013, at 11:47 AM, Harry Mamaysky wrote:
> I know how to define replacement functions in R (i.e. ‘foo<-‘ <-
> function(x,value) x<-value, etc.), but how do you define replacement
> functions that operate on subsets of arrays (i.e. how do you pass an index
> into foo)?
> For example, why does the following use of “rownames” work?
`rownames` of a dataframe is a vector, so indexing with "[" and a single vector
of indices is adequate. I cannot really tell what your conceptual
"why"-difficulty might be. This is just assignment within a vector. That is not
really a "replacement function operating on a subset of an array" since
rownames are not values of the dataframe .... and it's not an "array". (Careful
use of terms is needed here.)
>
>> aa <- data.frame( a=1:10,b=101:110 )
>
>> aa
>
> a b
>
> 1 1 101
>
> 2 2 102
>
> 3 3 103
>
> 4 4 104
>
> 5 5 105
>
> 6 6 106
>
> 7 7 107
>
> 8 8 108
>
> 9 9 109
>
> 10 10 110
>
>> rownames(aa)[2:4] <- c('row2','row3','row4')
>
>> aa
>
> a b
>
> 1 1 101
>
> row2 2 102
>
> row3 3 103
>
> row4 4 104
>
> 5 5 105
>
> 6 6 106
>
> 7 7 107
>
> 8 8 108
>
> 9 9 109
>
> 10 10 110
>
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Harry
>
>
> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA
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