>>>>> "Herve" == Herve Pages <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>>>> on Thu, 02 Nov 2006 20:46:01 -0800 writes:
Herve> Hi again, The man page for 'as.matrix' says:
>> 'as.matrix' is a generic function. The method
>> for data frames will convert any non-numeric/complex
>> column into a character vector using 'format' and so
>> return a character matrix, except that all-logical
>> data frames will be coerced to a logical matrix.
In very old versions of R (e.g. 0.3 from March 1996),
is.numeric(<logical>) was TRUE
and there the help page was entirely correct.
I think if you replace [in the above paragraph]
"non-numeric/complex"
by "non-(logical/numeric/complex)"
the help page is correct again.
Herve> If one column is of mode character, then 'as.matrix'
Herve> will effectively return a character matrix:
(as it says in the man page, and always did in all
implementations of the S language)
Herve> Note that the doc says that "any non-numeric/complex
Herve> column" will be passed thru 'format' which seems to
Herve> be exactly the other way around:
No! You left off the second part of the statement cited initally.
Slightly reformulated:
Iff there's any non-(logical/numeric/complex) column,
that will have to be passed through format and hence
the result must be a character matrix
and hence every other column also needs to be "formatted"
>> as.matrix(df5)
Herve> toto titi 1 "a" " 9" 2 "bb" "999"
Herve> Anyway why one would like to have the numeric values
Herve> passed thru 'format' to start with?
Recall: The result must be a matrix !
If it can't be a numeric matrix the decision was it must
be character.
BTW: Exactly because of your problems,
The function data.matrix() had been devised (long ago in
pre-R times),
and data.matrix *is* the first entry in "See Also" on the
help page for as.matrix
Martin
______________________________________________
R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
