<div>Dear all, </div><div><br></div><div>I just saw a new package '<b>multitable</b>' (<b>data.list</b>) published today. Here is the selected description: </div><div><br></div><div>"M<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; ">any data sets do not easily fit into a single data frame, such as inherently multiple-table data (e.g. fourth-corner problem and other trait-based data sets). Storing such data in a single data frame results in either large numbers of meaningless missing values or storage of redundant information. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: medium; ">The multitable package <i>introduces new data storage objects called data.lists, which are extensions of data.frames</i>. As data.lists can be coerced to data.frames, they can be used with all R functions that accept an object that is coercible to a data.frame (e.g. lm; plot; lme; and many more). The multitable package also provides several mechanisms for simplifying the manipulation of data.list objects.</span>"</div>
<div><br></div><div>[data.list] <a href="http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/multitable/index.html">http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/multitable/index.html</a></div><div><br></div><div>[Feature Request #202] <a href="https://r-forge.r-project.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=202&group_id=240&atid=978">https://r-forge.r-project.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=202&group_id=240&atid=978</a></div>
<div><br></div>[Discussion]<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ffffff"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arialverdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: courier, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; white-space: pre; "><a href="http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Suggest-a-cool-feature-Use-data-table-like-a-sorted-indexed-data-list-td2544213.html">http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Suggest-a-cool-feature-Use-data-table-like-a-sorted-indexed-data-list-td2544213.html</a></span></font></span><br>
<br>[Idea] I am very excited when I see this package, and can't help imagining the possibility of data.table and data.list mutually leveraging each other, i.e. data.list can leverage data.table's beautiful syntax and extremely high performance; while data.table can leverage data.list's flexible object model (the long existing feature request #202). <div>
<br></div><div><div><div>To data.table core team, will multitable (data.list) package make it easy to implement feature #202? </div><div><br></div><div>I don't know whether the multitable's author is aware of data.table. I will write to make suggestions to the multitable author: at least, I think it should be an easy change for him to make data.list an extension of data.table instead of data.frame, and will make multitable package directly inherit data.table's power. Any thoughts before I approach Steve? or it would be better to let data.table team raise this idea to him? :)</div>
<div><br></div></div></div><div>Best regards,</div><div><br></div>