R vector values in dataframe

Question

I have a dataframe and would like to add a new column where the values are vectors. Is this possible in R?

Thanks,

Answer 1

You can store a list as part of a data frame, which is one way to have vector-valued entries. For example:

m <- data.frame(a=1:10)
m$l <- lapply(1:10, function(x) c(x, x + 1))
m$l

As an example of how this is actually used in R, a POSIXlt date is actually a list with components giving the year, month, day, and so on. When you store such a date variable in a data frame, what is stored is a list of vectors.