R annoyances

Thanks all for pointing out that I can use 
	mtx[,1,drop=F]

-----Original Message-----
From: Uwe Ligges [mailto:ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de] 
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 10:49 AM
To: Chalasani, Prasad
Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] R annoyances


Chalasani, Prasad wrote:

Dear R Folks,
I'm a big fan of R, but there are a couple of things
that repeatedly annoy me, and I wondered if anyone
has neat ways to deal with them.

(a) When using "apply" row-wise to a matrix, it returns
   the results column-wise, and to preserve the original
   orientation, I've to do a transpose. E.g. I've to keep
   doing a transpose, which I consider to be quite annoying.

   transformed.mtx <- t(apply( mtx, 1, exp))

I'd rather type

   exp(mtx)

(b) When extracting 2 or more columns of a matrix, 
   R returns the result as a matrix, BUT when extracting
   just one column, it returns a vector/array, rather than
   a matrix, so I've to keep doing as.matrix, which is annoying.

sub.mtx <- as.matrix(mtx[,1])

Of course I could write a suitable function
	cols <- function(mtx,range) as.matrix(mtx[, range])
but then I lose the syntactic sugar of being able to say "[,1]".

The docs suggest:

   mtx[ , 1, drop = FALSE]


Uwe Ligges

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Uwe Ligges
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 10:08 AM
To: Chalasani, Prasad
Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] R annoyances

Chalasani, Prasad wrote:

Thanks all for pointing out that I can use 
	mtx[,1,drop=F]

Which, for example, won't work for
  F <- 10.25

---> drop=FALSE  !
           ^^^^^

Uwe Ligges

-----Original Message-----
From: Uwe Ligges [mailto:ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de]
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 10:49 AM
To: Chalasani, Prasad
Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] R annoyances


Chalasani, Prasad wrote:

Dear R Folks,
I'm a big fan of R, but there are a couple of things that 

repeatedly 

annoy me, and I wondered if anyone has neat ways to deal with them.

(a) When using "apply" row-wise to a matrix, it returns
   the results column-wise, and to preserve the original
   orientation, I've to do a transpose. E.g. I've to keep
   doing a transpose, which I consider to be quite annoying.

   transformed.mtx <- t(apply( mtx, 1, exp))

I'd rather type

   exp(mtx)

(b) When extracting 2 or more columns of a matrix, 
   R returns the result as a matrix, BUT when extracting
   just one column, it returns a vector/array, rather than
   a matrix, so I've to keep doing as.matrix, which is annoying.

sub.mtx <- as.matrix(mtx[,1])

Of course I could write a suitable function
	cols <- function(mtx,range) as.matrix(mtx[, range])
but then I lose the syntactic sugar of being able to say "[,1]".

The docs suggest:

   mtx[ , 1, drop = FALSE]


Uwe Ligges

Dear Uwe,

I've often wondered why T and F aren't reserved words in R as TRUE and FALSE
are. Perhaps there's some use of T and F as variables, but that seems
ill-advised.

Regards,
 John

--------------------------------
John Fox
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada L8S 4M4
905-525-9140x23604
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox 
-------------------------------- 

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Uwe Ligges
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 10:08 AM
To: Chalasani, Prasad
Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] R annoyances

Chalasani, Prasad wrote:

Thanks all for pointing out that I can use 
mtx[,1,drop=F]

Which, for example, won't work for
 F <- 10.25

---> drop=FALSE  !
          ^^^^^

Uwe Ligges

-----Original Message-----
From: Uwe Ligges [mailto:ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de]
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 10:49 AM
To: Chalasani, Prasad
Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: Re: [R] R annoyances


Chalasani, Prasad wrote:

Dear R Folks,
I'm a big fan of R, but there are a couple of things that 

repeatedly 

annoy me, and I wondered if anyone has neat ways to deal with them.

(a) When using "apply" row-wise to a matrix, it returns
  the results column-wise, and to preserve the original
  orientation, I've to do a transpose. E.g. I've to keep
  doing a transpose, which I consider to be quite annoying.

  transformed.mtx <- t(apply( mtx, 1, exp))

I'd rather type

  exp(mtx)

(b) When extracting 2 or more columns of a matrix, 
  R returns the result as a matrix, BUT when extracting
  just one column, it returns a vector/array, rather than
  a matrix, so I've to keep doing as.matrix, which is annoying.

sub.mtx <- as.matrix(mtx[,1])

Of course I could write a suitable function
	cols <- function(mtx,range) as.matrix(mtx[, range])
but then I lose the syntactic sugar of being able to say "[,1]".

The docs suggest:

  mtx[ , 1, drop = FALSE]


Uwe Ligges