Thomas Lumley • 7/25/2015

stringsAsFactors = <sigh>

This article delves into the infamous 'stringsAsFactors' default in R, using it as a case study to explore broader issues in R's design. It explains the historical context of factors as a data-compression hack for strings, their role as enumerations, and how their automatic conversion in functions like read.table() became a persistent pain point for programmers, highlighting tensions between statistical computing and software engineering needs.

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#data types #data analysis #Strings