What is the best way to manage metadata in R? [duplicate]

Question

In analyzing data the metadata about variables is extremely important. How do you manage this information in R?

For example, is there a way to specify a label that will be printed instead of the variable name?

What facilities are there in R for this?

Merilynmeringue

I'll add that some of the need for this in other languages (think SAS and 8 character variable name limits) isn't present in R. If my variable is Mean_Aspririn_Concentration_after_24_Hours then I can call it that. – Filariasis

@Paul - you must love typing ;-) – Perplexity

Answer 1

Quick suggestions that come to mind are

1. attributes to store data along with an object (as Frank Harrell has championed for a long time)
2. the comment() function can do parts of this
3. the whole gamut of object-orientation to achieve different printing behaviour etc

Pantagruel

Answer 2

Use the repo package. You can assign each variable a long name, a description, a set of tags, a remote url, dependency relations and also attach to it figures or generic external files. Find the latest stable release on CRAN (install.packages("repo")) or the latest development on github. A quick overview here. Hope it helps.

Thermomotor