On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Uli Flenker; Raum 704 wrote:
> Dear R-helpers,
>
> I frequently run into problems when I modify elements of factors (R 1.0.0,
> Linux 2.0.25). For example, after splitting a data frame accordinng to
That's already two versions old, three come next Tuesday.
> whatever criterion, it might well happen that not all levels of a factor
> are present in all new data frames. However, R doesn't seem to care
about.
> When performing some kind of analysis seperately on the new frames, each
> time the unreduced number of levels is present.
>
> That can be very problematic, as a lot of methods tend to crash because no
> data are found for the "lost" level.
>
> Neither explicit setting of "data=data.frame.xyz" nor any
straightforward
> use of "detach()" or "attach()" nor
> "levels(problem.factor)<-c("reduced","levels",
...)" did help.
>
> In the latter case I obtain
>
> Error in levels<-.factor(*tmp*, value = c("A",
"B")) :
> number of levels differs
>
> no matter whether the relevant data.frame is attached to the search list
> or not, no matter whether the number of levels is appropriate in that data
> frame and no matter whether an "extra" factor of the name exists
or not.
>
> I also tried to modify the attributes of the problematic factors
> explicitly without succes.
>
> The persistance of levels of factors once established seems to be so
> robust that I suspect its a feature. As far as I remember no one
> compalained about this properties so far. Am I missing something obvious?
> Are there any suggestions for workarounds?
It's definitely a feature. What methods crash? (I hope you mean gave an
error, not crashed R.)
The levels of a factor are the set of possible values, not the set of
achieved values. Methods should cope with that (possibly with warnings).
The best way to drop levels, BTW, is
problem.factor <- problem.factor[,drop=TRUE]
--
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 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
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