r - How to delete a row from a data.frame without losing the attributes

Question

for starters: I searched for hours on this problem by now - so if the answer should be trivial, please forgive me...

What I want to do is delete a row (no. 101) from a data.frame. It contains test data and should not appear in my analyses. My problem is: Whenever I subset from the data.frame, the attributes (esp. comments) are lost.

str(x)
# x has comments for each variable
x <- x[1:100,]
str(x)
# now x has lost all comments

It is well documented that subsetting will drop all attributes - so far, it's perfectly clear. The manual (e.g. http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/base/html/Extract.data.frame.html) even suggests a way to preserve the attributes:

## keeping special attributes: use a class with a
## "as.data.frame" and "[" method:


as.data.frame.avector <- as.data.frame.vector

`[.avector` <- function(x,i,...) {
  r <- NextMethod("[")
  mostattributes(r) <- attributes(x)
  r
}

d <- data.frame(i= 0:7, f= gl(2,4),
                u= structure(11:18, unit = "kg", class="avector"))
str(d[2:4, -1]) # 'u' keeps its "unit"

I am not yet so far into R to understand what exactly happens here. However, simply running these lines (except the last three) does not change the behavior of my subsetting. Using the command subset() with an appropriate vector (100-times TRUE + 1 FALSE) gives me the same result. And simply storing the attributes to a variable and restoring it after the subset, does not work, either.

# Does not work...
tmp <- attributes(x)
x <- x[1:100,]
attributes(x) <- tmp

Of course, I could write all comments to a vector (var=>comment), subset and write them back using a loop - but that does not seem a well-founded solution. And I am quite sure I will encounter datasets with other relevant attributes in future analyses.

So this is where my efforts in stackoverflow, Google, and brain power got stuck. I would very much appreciate if anyone could help me out with a hint. Thanks!

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly, you have some data in a data.frame, and the columns of the data.frame have comments associated with them. Perhaps something like the following?

set.seed(1)

mydf<-data.frame(aa=rpois(100,4),bb=sample(LETTERS[1:5],
  100,replace=TRUE))

comment(mydf$aa)<-"Don't drop me!"
comment(mydf$bb)<-"Me either!"

So this would give you something like

> str(mydf)
'data.frame':   100 obs. of  2 variables:
 $ aa: atomic  3 3 4 7 2 7 7 5 5 1 ...
  ..- attr(*, "comment")= chr "Don't drop me!"
 $ bb: Factor w/ 5 levels "A","B","C","D",..: 4 2 2 5 4 2 1 3 5 3 ...
  ..- attr(*, "comment")= chr "Me either!"

And when you subset this, the comments are dropped:

> str(mydf[1:2,]) # comment dropped.
'data.frame':   2 obs. of  2 variables:
 $ aa: num  3 3
 $ bb: Factor w/ 5 levels "A","B","C","D",..: 4 2

To preserve the comments, define the function [.avector, as you did above (from the documentation) then add the appropriate class attributes to each of the columns in your data.frame (EDIT: to keep the factor levels of bb, add "factor" to the class of bb.):

mydf$aa<-structure(mydf$aa, class="avector")
mydf$bb<-structure(mydf$bb, class=c("avector","factor"))

So that the comments are preserved:

> str(mydf[1:2,])
'data.frame':   2 obs. of  2 variables:
 $ aa:Class 'avector'  atomic [1:2] 3 3
  .. ..- attr(*, "comment")= chr "Don't drop me!"
 $ bb: Factor w/ 5 levels "A","B","C","D",..: 4 2
  ..- attr(*, "comment")= chr "Me either!"

EDIT:

If there are many columns in your data.frame that have attributes you want to preserve, you could use lapply (EDITED to include original column class):

mydf2 <- data.frame( lapply( mydf, function(x) {
  structure( x, class = c("avector", class(x) ) )
} ) )

However, this drops comments associated with the data.frame itself (such as comment(mydf)<-"I'm a data.frame"), so if you have any, assign them to the new data.frame:

comment(mydf2)<-comment(mydf)

And then you have

> str(mydf2[1:2,])
'data.frame':   2 obs. of  2 variables:
 $ aa:Classes 'avector', 'numeric'  atomic [1:2] 3 3
  .. ..- attr(*, "comment")= chr "Don't drop me!"
 $ bb: Factor w/ 5 levels "A","B","C","D",..: 4 2
  ..- attr(*, "comment")= chr "Me either!"
 - attr(*, "comment")= chr "I'm a data.frame"