[R] creating a data.frame from scratch

[Drake Gossi]

Hello everyone,

Is there any way to create a data.frame from scratch? other than, say, this?

> structure(list(Fruit = structure(c(1L, 2L, 5L, 4L, 3L), .Label =
c("apple",
"banana", "kiwi", "orange", "pear"), class = "factor"), Color =
structure(c(3L,
4L, 1L, 2L, 1L), .Label = c("green", "orange", "red", "yellow"
), class = "factor"), Shape = structure(c(3L, 1L, 2L, 3L, 3L), .Label =
c("oblong",
"pear", "round"), class = "factor"), Juice = c(1, 0, 0.5, 1,
0)), class = "data.frame", row.names = c("1", "2", "3", "4",
"5"))


which yields

   Fruit  Color  Shape  Juice
1  apple    red  round  1.0
2 banana yellow oblong   0.0
3   pear  green   pear   0.5
4 orange orange  round   1.0
5   kiwi  green  round   0.0


I get *that* it works. I just don't know *how* it works, and whether or not
there is another, easier way...

For example,

> structure(list(Fruit = structure(c(1L, 2L, 5L, 4L, 3L), .Label =
c("apple", "banana", "kiwi", "orange", "pear") ...


What on earth are these numbers? c(1L, 2L, 5L, 4L, 3L)? and why are they
out of order?

And then why put the fruits out of order? c("apple",
"banana", "kiwi", "orange", "pear")? since that's not a descending order?
since, in the final data.frame, it goes apple, banana, *pear*, *orange*,
kiwi?

So many questions!

Drake

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