melt when id.vars = NULL

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
r
Domain
data

Research direction

Start at the melt.data.table entry point and compare its handling of an explicit id.vars = NULL with reshape2::melt. Reproduce the data.table example, then verify that the requested behavior avoids the guessing warning and that the warning text no longer contains the reported typo.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

reshape

melt a data.table where all variables are measure.vars without specifying id.vars or measure.vars, works fine, but triggers a (relevant and informative) warning*:

library(reshape2)
library(data.table)
dt <- data.table(x1 = 1, x2 = 2, x3 = 3)
melt(dt)
#    variable value
# 1:       x1     1
# 2:       x2     2
# 3:       x3     3
# Warning message:
#   In melt.data.table(dt) :
#   To be consistent with reshape2's melt, id.vars and measure.vars are internally guessed when both
# are 'NULL'. All non-numeric/integer/logical type columns are conisdered id.vars, which in this case
# are columns []. Consider providing at least one of 'id' or 'measure' vars in future.

"id.vars and measure.vars are [...] both [...] NULL". So let's try to set id.vars = NULL because the data contains measure.vars only:

melt(dt, id.vars = NULL)

Same warning.

Try similar in reshape2::melt; id/measure.vars not specified, generates a warning:

dt <- as.data.frame(dt)
melt(df)
# No id variables; using all as measure variables
#   variable value
# 1       x1     1
# 2       x2     2
# 3       x3     3

Setting id.vars = NULL removes the warning:

melt(df, id.vars = NULL)
#   variable value
# 1       x1     1
# 2       x2     2
# 3       x3     3

Should id.vars = NULL in data.table::melt work like in reshape2::melt, i.e. result in no "guessing" of id/measure.vars and no warning, "To be consistent with reshape2's melt"?


*Please note the typo in the warning: "conisdered" should be "considered"

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