Just to follow up on my own post a bit: xmelt$year[xmelt$year == "first", drop = TRUE]
will do what you want. I think because in the subset there are multiple columns not all of which are factor, the method for '[' being used is not the factor one that would drop unused levels. I did not make that clear at all the first time around (and probably still butchered it, which some knowledgeable soul may correct me on). Also I did get Hmisc installed, but I think dropUnusedLevels() does not work in this case for a similar reason. Henrique's solution is, as usual, the shortest :) Josh [snip] ______________________________________________ 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.
