Jeff, Thanks for the response. You are right of course. I went back and reread the help page. I guess I just glossed over the 'x is numeric' statement because the default FUN was the mean, and seq_along doesn't care about type. I should know better than to disregard what I read in the help pages. But you are right, using any numeric vector of appropriate size as the first argument does what I need.
Dan Daniel Nordlund, PhD Research and Data Analysis Division Services & Enterprise Support Administration Washington State Department of Social and Health Services > -----Original Message----- > From: Jeff Newmiller [mailto:jdnew...@dcn.davis.ca.us] > Sent: Monday, October 31, 2016 4:34 PM > To: Nordlund, Dan (DSHS/RDA); r-help@r-project.org > Subject: Re: [R] function ave() with seq_along returning char sequence > instead of numeric > > The help page describes the first argument x as a numeric... it is not > designed to accept character, so the fact that you get anything even close to > right is just a bonus. > > As the doctor says, "if it hurts, don't do that". > > ave( rep( 1, length( v ), v, FUN=seq_along ) > -- > Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity. > > On October 31, 2016 3:29:01 PM PDT, "Nordlund, Dan (DSHS/RDA)" > <nord...@dshs.wa.gov> wrote: > >Given the following R statements > > > >v <- c('a', 'a', 'a', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'c', 'c', 'c', 'c') ave(v, > >list(v), FUN=seq_along) [1] "1" "2" "3" "1" "2" "3" "1" "2" "3" "4" > > > >I was expecting to get a numeric vector back. I apparently have missed > >something in the documentation. If vector v is character, then the > >numeric sequence is converted to character before returning. I can > >work around by doing something like > > > >ave(seq_along(v), list(v), FUN=seq_along) [1] 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 > > > >Is the work around the best way to go, or have I missed an option in > >the documentation? > > > > > >Thanks, > > > >Dan > > > >Daniel Nordlund, PhD > >Research and Data Analysis Division > >Services & Enterprise Support Administration Washington State > >Department of Social and Health Services > > > >______________________________________________ > >R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > >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. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.
