is it possible to name the first unnamed automated generated column in a data.frame? as you can see with the following code, i replaced the very first automated generated column with my first column.
if not, how can i access the data there? thank you
These are the row names of the data frame. They aren’t actually a column at all: they are a vector of values stored separately as an attribute of the object. They also have to follow specific rules (there can’t be any duplicated values) and — fair warning — they do not always behave the way people expect. As an attribute, there is no way to give them a name (other than their built-in name of row.names).
Usually when people want to name the row names, it’s because they are working with a data frame that already has meaningful row names. The usual advice is to convert the row names into a proper column. But you seem to be trying to move data from a proper column into the row names, so I think it will help if you can explain more of the bigger picture of what you’re trying to do?
thank you for your reply, which already answered my question. i solved the problem with you're advice to convert the row names into a proper column, then i could give them the name i had to.