This is just to suggest that the functions read.ftable and write.ftable be moved from the stats package to the base package. As I understand it, this would allow ftable format to be used (more easily than at present) for datasets placed in the "data" subdirectory of packages. And that would be a good thing? (It would also make the advice given in Writing R Extensions,> Currently, data files can have one of three types as indicated by > their extension: plain R code (.R or .r), tables (.tab, .txt, or > .csv)...clearer in the sense that "table" could be read to mean the same thing as it does in other parts of R.) David Professor David Firth Dept of Statistics University of Warwick Coventry CV4 7AL United Kingdom Voice: +44 (0)247 657 2581 Fax: +44 (0)247 652 4532 Web: http://www.warwick.ac.uk/go/dfirth