[R] Why do the results of paste() depend on how the argument (data.frame) is constructed?

[Erik Iverson]

On 08/01/2010 08:48 PM, thmsfuller066 at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The following two 'df's should be the same, although their
> constructions are different.

But they aren't the same.

df1 <- data.frame(X=c(1, 2, 3), Y=c(4, 5, 6))
df2 <- data.frame(X=1:3, Y=4:6)
identical(df1, df2)

yields FALSE

See

str(df1)
str(df2)

to see how they differ.



  But the results of paste() are different.
> I don't see this is explained in ?paste. Could you help me understand
> why it is like this?
>
>> df=data.frame(X=c(1, 2, 3), Y=c(4, 5, 6))
>> df
>    X Y
> 1 1 4
> 2 2 5
> 3 3 6
>> paste(df)
> [1] "c(1, 2, 3)" "c(4, 5, 6)"
>> df=data.frame(X=1:3, Y=4:6)
>> df
>    X Y
> 1 1 4
> 2 2 5
> 3 3 6
>> paste(df)
> [1] "1:3" "4:6"
>>
>
>