[datatable-help] fread'ing logicals

[Arunkumar Srinivasan]

Matthew, 

+1 for retaining T and F like read.csv.
+1 for the dropins() feature as well.

Arun


On Saturday, September 14, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Matthew Dowle wrote:

> On 14/09/13 06:48, Chinmay Patil wrote:
> > I didn't mean changes in data.table's interface but the way data.table works in itself compared to normal data frames. I know there are valid reasons for structuring data.table's interface the way it is but not all users get it immediately.
> 
> 
> The bottom line in my mind is that even if base syntax was sped up 
> (assignment to an unnamed data.frame needn't copy the whole data.frame 
> for example), I would still move from 
> subset()/transform()/with()/DF[i,j]<-value syntax, to i,j and by inside 
> [...] with .SD,.I,.N and := in j. I can do things with that syntax 
> that I need to do which aren't always so easy with base syntax (like 
> adding columns by reference by group).
> 
> And base R syntax is indeed being sped up by pqR, Renjin, Riposte, TERR, 
> CXXR, fastr which may feed into GNU R. Once that is mature and the dust 
> has settled, I would still move from data.frame to data.table on each of 
> them. Maybe we should market the things that data.table does that base 
> R doesn't. Rather than speed differences.
> 
> > 
> > As for data.table, I am not complaining, just saying what other users complaints I have heard of.
> > I personally love data.table and am willing to put the effort to learn best ways to use it while most users aren't.
> > 
> 
> 
> Great. data.table is for people like you.
> 
> So we'll keep the default fread'ing of "T" and "F" as logicals then for 
> consistency with read.csv.
> 
> And I still hope to produce a drop-in replacement for read.csv which 
> returns a data.frame but uses fread under the hood. That will speed up 
> existing code, but users can use the extra features of fread if they 
> want, too.
> 
> Matthew
> 
> > 
> > Chinmay
> > 
> > On 14 Sep, 2013, at 1:29 PM, Steve Lianoglou <lianoglou.steve at gene.com (mailto:lianoglou.steve at gene.com)> wrote:
> > 
> > > Thanks for the quick response.
> > > 
> > > As for the "learning curve" stuff -- no real comment there, but:
> > > 
> > > > For eg. I recently heard complains about data.table itself from due to
> > > > changes in interface
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Could you provide some concrete examples about which changes have
> > > stumped users? Perhaps we can learn from these critiques. I had
> > > thought we were pretty good about discussing any (breaking) changes on
> > > list, but I'd be interested to see where this has failed so it might
> > > perhaps be avoided in the future.
> > > 
> > > > and learning curve that data.table comes with... I hear
> > > > similar complaints about some packages like ggplot2, plyr..
> > > > 
> > > > Even though all these are great packages.. people don't like radical changes
> > > > to interfaces as it makes refactoring older code even more painful.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Still curious to hear what radical changes have come down the pipe.
> > > 
> > > Thanks for taking the time to comment.
> > > 
> > > Cheers,
> > > -steve
> > > 
> > > -- 
> > > Steve Lianoglou
> > > Computational Biologist
> > > Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
> > > Genentech
> > > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > datatable-help mailing list
> > datatable-help at lists.r-forge.r-project.org (mailto:datatable-help at lists.r-forge.r-project.org)
> > https://lists.r-forge.r-project.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/datatable-help
> > 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> datatable-help mailing list
> datatable-help at lists.r-forge.r-project.org (mailto:datatable-help at lists.r-forge.r-project.org)
> https://lists.r-forge.r-project.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/datatable-help
> 
> 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.r-forge.r-project.org/pipermail/datatable-help/attachments/20130914/77b01075/attachment.html>