In R the traditional structure for table data is called a data.frame. However, two notable packages define variations of it that are in frequent use: tibble and data.table.
Apart from any discussion on which one should be preferred, we need precise words to address each of them. A 'tibble' is a 'tibble', a 'data.table' is a 'data.table' but the word 'data.frame' has become ambiguous:
- 'data.frame' always meant a structure that can be defined via
base::data.frameand it never lost that meaning. is.data.framereturnsTRUEon data.frames as defined in (1.) and on data.tables and on tibbles so 'data.frame' also has become an umbrella term over all three.
There are differences in between the 'classical data.frame' and the newer variants such as iris["Sepal.Width"] returning data but as.data.table(iris)["Sepal.Width"] returning an error message.
So if and when I want to address an old, plain vanilla, base type of data.frame, what should I call it?
If there is no unambiguous term, who and how could one be coined?
(This question arose from trying to help somebody in a German R forum IRL: http://forum.r-statistik.de/viewtopic.php?p=17498#p17498 )