R help - Dec 2007 - How to prevent fix() from converting Dates into numeric

Dear list members

Here is a strange problem that I have had for a long time, without 
finding out how to solve it. Whenever I use fix() on a data.frame that 
contains Dates, these are converted to numerics. As shown by the very 
simple example:

a <- data.frame(var1 = 1, today = Sys.Date() )
a
fix(a)
a

Why is that? And can anything be done against it?

Many thanks for your help!

Best,

Christian Gold
www.uib.no/people/cgo022

Dear list members

Here is a strange problem that I have had for a long time, without
finding out how to solve it. Whenever I use fix() on a data.frame that
contains Dates, these are converted to numerics. As shown by the very
simple example:

a <- data.frame(var1 = 1, today = Sys.Date() )
a
fix(a)
a

Why is that? And can anything be done against it?

Many thanks for your help!

Best,

Christian Gold
www.uib.no/people/cgo022

fix on a data frame calls edit: see ?edit.data.frame.  The help for 
fix does say

   Editing an \R object may change it in ways other than are obvious: see
   the comment under \code{\link{edit}}.

The simple answer is not to use fix() or edit() on other than the data 
frames they are documented to work on.

On Fri, 7 Dec 2007, Christian Gold wrote:
> Dear list members
>
> Here is a strange problem that I have had for a long time, without
> finding out how to solve it. Whenever I use fix() on a data.frame that
> contains Dates, these are converted to numerics. As shown by the very
> simple example:
>
> a <- data.frame(var1 = 1, today = Sys.Date() )
> a
> fix(a)
> a
>
> Why is that? And can anything be done against it?
>
> Many thanks for your help!
>
> Best,
>
> Christian Gold
> www.uib.no/people/cgo022
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at 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.
>
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

Thanks. So there is no solution, other than avoiding fix() and edit()?
What would then be the recommended way to make visible and inspect large 
data.frames (i.e. that are to big for sensibly displaying on the 
console)? Would I need to write the data to a file and open in a 
spreadsheet programme?

Christian



Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> fix on a data frame calls edit: see ?edit.data.frame.  The help for fix 
> does say
> 
>   Editing an \R object may change it in ways other than are obvious: see
>   the comment under \code{\link{edit}}.
> 
> The simple answer is not to use fix() or edit() on other than the data 
> frames they are documented to work on.
> 
> On Fri, 7 Dec 2007, Christian Gold wrote:
> 
>> Dear list members
>>
>> Here is a strange problem that I have had for a long time, without
>> finding out how to solve it. Whenever I use fix() on a data.frame that
>> contains Dates, these are converted to numerics. As shown by the very
>> simple example:
>>
>> a <- data.frame(var1 = 1, today = Sys.Date() )
>> a
>> fix(a)
>> a
>>
>> Why is that? And can anything be done against it?
>>
>> Many thanks for your help!
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Christian Gold
>> www.uib.no/people/cgo022
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at 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.
>>
>

See ?View for your new question (and please change the subject line when 
you change the subject: see the R posting guide)

You could also have used e.g. format() on the data frame before calling 
fix() if all you want to do was to view it.

On Sat, 8 Dec 2007, Christian Gold wrote:
> Thanks. So there is no solution, other than avoiding fix() and edit()?
> What would then be the recommended way to make visible and inspect large 
> data.frames (i.e. that are to big for sensibly displaying on the console)? 
> Would I need to write the data to a file and open in a spreadsheet
programme?
>
> Christian
>
>
>
> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> fix on a data frame calls edit: see ?edit.data.frame.  The help for fix
>> does say
>>
>>   Editing an \R object may change it in ways other than are obvious:
see
>>   the comment under \code{\link{edit}}.
>> 
>> The simple answer is not to use fix() or edit() on other than the data 
>> frames they are documented to work on.
>> 
>> On Fri, 7 Dec 2007, Christian Gold wrote:
>> 
>>> Dear list members
>>> 
>>> Here is a strange problem that I have had for a long time, without
>>> finding out how to solve it. Whenever I use fix() on a data.frame
that
>>> contains Dates, these are converted to numerics. As shown by the
very
>>> simple example:
>>> 
>>> a <- data.frame(var1 = 1, today = Sys.Date() )
>>> a
>>> fix(a)
>>> a
>>> 
>>> Why is that? And can anything be done against it?
>>> 
>>> Many thanks for your help!
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> 
>>> Christian Gold
>>> www.uib.no/people/cgo022
>>> 
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at 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.
>>> 
>> 
>
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595