DataFrame-comparison: DataFrame comparison methods

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Author(s) Examples

Description

The DataFrame class provides methods to compare across rows of the DataFrame, including ordering and matching. Each DataFrame is effectively treated as a vector of rows.

Usage

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## S4 method for signature 'DataFrame'
sameAsPreviousROW(x)

## S4 method for signature 'DataFrame,DataFrame'
match(x, table, nomatch = NA_integer_, incomparables = NULL, ...)

## S4 method for signature 'DataFrame'
order(..., na.last = TRUE, decreasing = FALSE, method = c("auto", 
    "shell", "radix"))

## S4 method for signature 'DataFrame,DataFrame'
pcompare(x, y)

## S4 method for signature 'DataFrame,DataFrame'
e1 == e2

## S4 method for signature 'DataFrame,DataFrame'
e1 <= e2

Arguments

x, table, y, e1, e2

A DataFrame object.

nomatch, incomparables

See ?base::match.

...

For match, further arguments to pass to match.

For order, one or more DataFrame objects.

decreasing, na.last, method

See ?base::order.

Details

The treatment of a DataFrame as a “vector of rows” is useful in many cases, e.g., when each row is a record that needs to be ordered or matched. The methods provided here allow the use of all methods described in ?Vector-comparison, including sorting, matching, de-duplication, and so on.

Careful readers will notice this behaviour differs from the usual semantics of a data.frame, which acts as a list-like vector of columns. This discrepancy rarely causes problems, as it is not particularly common to compare columns of a data.frame in the first place.

Note that a match method for DataFrame objects is explicitly defined to avoid calling the corresponding method for List objects, which would yield the (undesired) list-like semantics. The same rationale is behind the explicit definition of <= and == despite the availability of pcompare.

Value

For sameAsPreviousROW: see sameAsPreviousROW.

For match: see match.

For order: see order.

For pcompare, == and <=: see pcompare.

Author(s)

Aaron Lun

Examples

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# Mocking up a DataFrame.
DF <- DataFrame(
    A=sample(LETTERS, 100, replace=TRUE),
    B=sample(5, 100, replace=TRUE)
)

# Matching:
match(DF, DF[1:10,])
selfmatch(DF)
unique(DF)

# Ordering, alone and with other vectors:
sort(DF)
order(DF, runif(nrow(DF)))

# Parallel comparison:
DF==DF
DF==DF[1,]

S4Vectors documentation built on Dec. 11, 2020, 2:02 a.m.