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hadley opened this issue May 25, 2016 · 5 comments
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Tibble vs tbl_df #82

hadley opened this issue May 25, 2016 · 5 comments
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@krlmlr
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@hadley
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hadley commented May 25, 2016 •
edited by krlmlr
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If you're new to tibble/dplyr, it's a bit confusing to understand the difference between tibbles and tbl_df. To help reduce this confusion we might:

  • Add ?tibble and explanation the history & definition
  • Make obj_sum return "tibble" for tibbles (instead of "tbl_df")
@hadley
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hadley commented May 25, 2016

That would mean we'd need to deprecate (and eventually remove) tibble().

What would you think of that @jennybc?

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krlmlr commented May 25, 2016

Alternative option: We prominently link to package?tibble from ?tibble from the first paragraph of the "Description" section.

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jennybc commented May 25, 2016

You're making me wonder if I know the difference between tibbles and tbl_df. When I say "a tibble", I think I mean a tbl_df. Am I confused? When you say tbl_df above, do you mean data.frame?

Regardless, I think you're saying it makes sense to use tibble as a place to document tibbles. So the function tibble() needs to get out of the way, i.e. only be known as frame_data(). That seems OK.

This brings up a question and it seems a decent place to ask it:

  • To turn sthg into a tibble, are you supposed to use tibble::as_data_frame()? Or dplyr::as.tbl()? Why isn't it tibble::as_tbl_df()? I guess because data_frame() exists? There are a lot of ways to get confused here.

krlmlr pushed a commit that referenced this issue May 26, 2016
add link
64175a8 
- Link to the package documentation from the `tibble` help page (#82).
krlmlr pushed a commit that referenced this issue Jun 13, 2016
Merge tag 'v1.0-6'
1670945 
- Reworked output: More concise summary, removed empty line, showing number of hidden rows and columns (#51).
- Link to the package documentation from the `tibble` help page (#82).
- Don't rely on `knitr` internals for testing (#78).
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hadley commented Jun 13, 2016

I think of data_frame() and as_data_frame() as parallels of data.frame() and as.data.frame() in the same way that read_csv() is a parallel of read.csv(). But maybe that's too clever?

It would be more consistent to have tibble() as the standard creation method and as_tibble() as the standard coercion method. We should probably keep data_frame() and as_data_frame() but de-emphasise them in the documentation.

@krlmlr krlmlr modified the milestone: 1.1 Jun 30, 2016
@krlmlr krlmlr self-assigned this Jun 30, 2016
@krlmlr krlmlr closed this as completed in 7ae74a6 Jun 30, 2016
krlmlr pushed a commit that referenced this issue Jun 30, 2016
Merge tag 'v1.0-15'
c208fba 
- Prefer `tibble()` and `as_tibble()` over `data_frame()` and `as_data_frame()` in code and documentation (#82).
- `tibble()` is no longer an alias for `frame_data()` (#82).
- Rename `is_data_frame()` to `is_tibble()`.
- `obj_sum()` and `type_sum()` show `"tibble"` instead of `"tbl_df"` for tibbles (#82).
krlmlr pushed a commit that referenced this issue Jul 4, 2016
Merge tag 'v1.1'
361c692 
Follow-up release.

- `tibble()` is no longer an alias for `frame_data()` (#82).
- Remove `tbl_df()` (#57).
- `$` returns `NULL` if column not found, without partial matching. A warning is given (#109).
- `[[` returns `NULL` if column not found (#109).

- Reworked output: More concise summary (begins with hash `#` and contains more text (#95)), removed empty line, showing number of hidden rows and columns (#51). The trailing metadata also begins with hash `#` (#101). Presence of row names is indicated by a star in printed output (#72).
- Format `NA` values in character columns as `<NA>`, like `print.data.frame()` does (#69).
- The number of printed extra cols is now an option (#68, @lionel-).
- Computation of column width properly handles wide (e.g., Chinese) characters, tests still fail on Windows (#100).
- `glimpse()` shows nesting structure for lists and uses angle brackets for type (#98).
- Tibbles with `POSIXlt` columns can be printed now, the text `<POSIXlt>` is shown as placeholder to encourage usage of `POSIXct` (#86).
- `type_sum()` shows only topmost class for S3 objects.

- Strict checking of integer and logical column indexes. For integers, passing a non-integer index or an out-of-bounds index raises an error. For logicals, only vectors of length 1 or `ncol` are supported. Passing a matrix or an array now raises an error in any case (#83).
- Warn if setting non-`NULL` row names (#75).
- Consistently surround variable names with single quotes in error messages.
- Use "Unknown column 'x'" as error message if column not found, like base R (#94).
- `stop()` and `warning()` are now always called with `call. = FALSE`.

- The `.Dim` attribute is silently stripped from columns that are 1d matrices (#84).
- Converting a tibble without row names to a regular data frame does not add explicit row names.
- `as_tibble.data.frame()` preserves attributes, and uses `as_tibble.list()` to calling overriden methods which may lead to endless recursion.

- New `has_name() (#102).
- Prefer `tibble()` and `as_tibble()` over `data_frame()` and `as_data_frame()` in code and documentation (#82).
- New `is.tibble()` and `is_tibble()` (#79).
- New `enframe()` that converts vectors to two-column tibbles (#31, #74).
- `obj_sum()` and `type_sum()` show `"tibble"` instead of `"tbl_df"` for tibbles (#82).
- `as_tibble.data.frame()` gains `validate` argument (as in `as_tibble.list()`), if `TRUE` the input is validated.
- Implement `as_tibble.default()` (#71, tidyverse/dplyr#1752).
- `has_rownames()` supports arguments that are not data frames.

- Two-dimensional indexing with `[[` works (#58, #63).
- Subsetting with empty index (e.g., `x[]`) also removes row names.

- Document behavior of `as_tibble.tbl_df()` for subclasses (#60).
- Document and test that subsetting removes row names.

- Don't rely on `knitr` internals for testing (#78).
- Fix compatibility with `knitr` 1.13 (#76).
- Enhance `knit_print()` tests.
- Provide default implementation for `tbl_sum.tbl_sql()` and `tbl_sum.tbl_grouped_df()` to allow `dplyr` release before a `tibble` release.
- Explicit tests for `format_v()` (#98).
- Test output for `NULL` value of `tbl_sum()`.
- Test subsetting in all variants (#62).
- Add missing test from dplyr.
- Use new `expect_output_file()` from `testthat`.
@lcolladotor lcolladotor mentioned this issue Dec 5, 2016
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