R help - Nov 2002 - subscripting a column from a data frame: row.names are dropped

Hi,

When a single column is subscripted from a data frame it doesn't inherit the
row names of the data frame. I find it surprising given the extent to which
R tries to carry names across computations. Is there a good reason for this?

Here is what I mean in details:
> y <- data.frame(a=c(1,2), b=c(1,2),
row.names=c("x","y"))
y <- data.frame(a=c(1,2), b=c(1,2),
row.names=c("x","y"))
> y
y
  a b
x 1 1
y 2 2
> y[,1]
y[,1]
[1] 1 2
> 
Note that y[,1] has no names. I use R1.6.0 if it matters.

Thanks,
Vadim

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