This is a result of how R treats factors.
There's more than one way to do what I think you're asking for. I've constructed a smaller version of your data frame to illustrate one quick way if that's all you need: > smdat<- > data.frame(V1=c("AB","AB.C","ABF10"),V2=rep("20091224",3),V3=rep(156.0,3)) > smdat V1 V2 V3 1 AB 20091224 156 2 AB.C 20091224 156 3 ABF10 20091224 156 > smdat[1,][1] V1 1 AB -- View this message in context: http://n4.nabble.com/Accessing-members-tp990043p990097.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ 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.