st_geometry null replacement: coercing to data.frame can change variable names

[bocinsky]

@edzer thanks for the great package! It's already simplifying and improving my R/GIS workflows.

When dropping the geometry column with st_geometry(obj) <- NULL, the brute-force coercing of the table to a data.frame using data.frame(x) (sf.R line 147) will change the names. Consider using as.data.frame(x) instead, or setting check.names = FALSE.

> test_df <- data.frame(`Some letters` = letters[1:10],
+                       x = 1:10,
+                       y = 11:20,
+                       check.names = F)
> test_df
   Some letters  x  y
1             a  1 11
2             b  2 12
3             c  3 13
4             d  4 14
5             e  5 15
6             f  6 16
7             g  7 17
8             h  8 18
9             i  9 19
10            j 10 20
> 
> test_df %<>% sf::st_as_sf(coords = c("x", "y"))
> test_df
Simple feature collection with 10 features and 1 field
geometry type:  POINT
dimension:      XY
bbox:           xmin: 1 ymin: 11 xmax: 10 ymax: 20
epsg (SRID):    NA
proj4string:    NA
   Some letters     geometry
1             a  POINT(1 11)
2             b  POINT(2 12)
3             c  POINT(3 13)
4             d  POINT(4 14)
5             e  POINT(5 15)
6             f  POINT(6 16)
7             g  POINT(7 17)
8             h  POINT(8 18)
9             i  POINT(9 19)
10            j POINT(10 20)
> 
> sf::st_geometry(test_df) <- NULL
> test_df
   Some.letters
1             a
2             b
3             c
4             d
5             e
6             f
7             g
8             h
9             i
10            j
> 
> # Demonstrating as.data.frame(x)
> test_df <- data.frame(`Some letters` = letters[1:10],
+                       x = 1:10,
+                       y = 11:20,
+                       check.names = F)
> data.frame(test_df)
   Some.letters  x  y
1             a  1 11
2             b  2 12
3             c  3 13
4             d  4 14
5             e  5 15
6             f  6 16
7             g  7 17
8             h  8 18
9             i  9 19
10            j 10 20
> as.data.frame(test_df)
   Some letters  x  y
1             a  1 11
2             b  2 12
3             c  3 13
4             d  4 14
5             e  5 15
6             f  6 16
7             g  7 17
8             h  8 18
9             i  9 19
10            j 10 20

[edzer]

Thanks, great suggestion!