Data frames ?

[depuis]

Hello,

I recently dived into code I wrote a few months ago ... and had a hard time
remembering what contained a matrix.

A possible solution to this kind of annoyance would be to implement something
similar to R "data frames". Such object is a matrix where lines and columns
have associated name. This way, matrix would be self-documented. This would
also help reading data headers, i.e. column names

Coding implications:
1) modify the basic matrix object
2) modify the print and display routines
3) at the user level : either follow the R paradigm: df$var is the column
named 'var' of the df data frame, or define some function : x = getcol(df,
"var") returning the column named "var" of df. Define also functions similar
to fieldnames: colnames & linenames

What do you think about it ? 

Pascal Dupuis
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