Full_Name: Sundar Dorai-Raj Version: 1.7.1 OS: Windows 2000 Submission from: (NULL) (4.18.65.62) Hi all, I just discovered a problem when merging two data.frames which don't have any columns in common and when one (or both) of the data.frames is a single column. E.g. x <- data.frame(x = 1:5, y = letters[1:5]) y <- data.frame(z = 1:2) z <- merge(x, y) The result z is as expected, but the resulting names of z are not right. I've tracked it down to following the line in merge.data.frame: if (l.b == 0) { ij <- expand.grid(1:nx, 1:ny) res <- cbind(x[ij[, 1], ], y[ij[, 2], ]) # <--- } Changing this line to: res <- cbind(x[ij[, 1], , drop = FALSE], y[ij[, 2], , drop = FALSE]) resolves the problem.