as_tibble.matrix should keep rownames attribute #288
Description
Currently, as_tibble.matrix() throws away rownames:
library(tibble)
mtmatrix <- as.matrix(mtcars)
rownames(mtmatrix)
#> [1] "Mazda RX4" "Mazda RX4 Wag" "Datsun 710"
#> [4] "Hornet 4 Drive" "Hornet Sportabout" "Valiant"
#> [7] "Duster 360" "Merc 240D" "Merc 230"
#> [10] "Merc 280" "Merc 280C" "Merc 450SE"
#> [13] "Merc 450SL" "Merc 450SLC" "Cadillac Fleetwood"
#> [16] "Lincoln Continental" "Chrysler Imperial" "Fiat 128"
#> [19] "Honda Civic" "Toyota Corolla" "Toyota Corona"
#> [22] "Dodge Challenger" "AMC Javelin" "Camaro Z28"
#> [25] "Pontiac Firebird" "Fiat X1-9" "Porsche 914-2"
#> [28] "Lotus Europa" "Ford Pantera L" "Ferrari Dino"
#> [31] "Maserati Bora" "Volvo 142E"
rownames(as_tibble(mtmatrix))
#> [1] "1" "2" "3" "4" "5" "6" "7" "8" "9" "10" "11" "12" "13" "14"
#> [15] "15" "16" "17" "18" "19" "20" "21" "22" "23" "24" "25" "26" "27" "28"
#> [29] "29" "30" "31" "32"This is inconsistent with as_tibble.data.frame, which makes sure to keep rownames
all.equal(
rownames(mtcars),
rownames(as_tibble(mtcars))
)
#> [1] TRUE
If a user has a rownamed matrix and wants a tibble with those rownames in it (e.g. confusion matrices from the randomForest package), they have to convert to a base data.frame first
mtmatrix %>%
as.data.frame() %>%
as_tibble() %>%
rownames_to_column("rname")Fixing this bug would remove the need for the as.data.frame() call, and make the steps match those for doing the same with a data.frame, e.g.
mtcars %>%
as_tibble() %>%
rownames_to_column("rname")This only saves one step, but standardizing the tibble interface across matrices and data.frames where possible seems like a worthy UX improvement.
Session Info
Used newest github version to make sure this wasn't fixed already
devtools::session_info("tibble")
#> Session info --------------------------------------------------------------
#> setting value
#> version R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30)
#> system x86_64, linux-gnu
#> ui X11
#> language (EN)
#> collate en_US.UTF-8
#> tz America/New_York
#> date 2017-08-02
#> Packages ------------------------------------------------------------------
#> package * version date source
#> Rcpp 0.12.12 2017-07-15 cran (@0.12.12)
#> rlang 0.1.1 2017-05-18 CRAN (R 3.4.0)
#> tibble * 1.3.3.9001 2017-08-02 Github (tidyverse/tibble@12767ae)Metadata
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ClaytonJY commentedon Aug 2, 2017
Looks like this conversion is done in C-land with
matrixToDataFrame; does the fix need to happen in there?That's a bit outside my skills, but I can try re-setting the attribute after the conversion, inside
as_tibble.matrix, and put that in a PR with a test or two.krlmlr commentedon Sep 12, 2017
Thanks. I agree that there is some inconsistency, but I'd rather not support row names in tibbles altogether. We may want to give a warning at some point, so there seems to be no point in enabling this functionality now.
We may want to consider adding a
keyargument instead, once we figure out support for keys (tidyverse/dplyr#1792), a special value would then convert the row names to a column and also work for matrices.ClaytonJY commentedon Sep 12, 2017
@krlmlr I think the key idea is really interesting, and something I've definitely missed from data.table, so it's exciting to see work in that direction.
I agree that tibble shouldn't support rownames, but I think it's important to make it easy for users to work with data that has rownames through no fault of theirs. That's why I made the PR, to make it as easy to get matrix rownames into a column as it is for data.frames.
Even better might be to have the as_tibble methods for matrix/data.frames accept a "rownames" argument, which will do what
rownames_to_columndoes up-front, thus avoiding the need to keep the rownames attribute on the tibble at all. Is that what you're thinking the keys will allow for?ClaytonJY commentedon Sep 12, 2017
If that wouldn't be handled best with new keys functionality, I'd be happy to write up a PR to modify
as_tibble.matrixandas_tibble.data.frameto do the rownames-to-column conversion up front!krlmlr commentedon Oct 4, 2017
as_tibble(rownames = "id")works now for matrices and data frames.Merge tag 'v1.3.4.9002'
Merge tag 'v1.4.1'
github-actions commentedon Dec 12, 2020
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