rxGetVarInfo: Get Variable Information for a Data Source.

Description

Get variable information for a RevoScaleR data source or data frame, including variable names, descriptions, and value labels

Usage

  rxGetVarInfo(data, getValueLabels = TRUE, varsToKeep = NULL,
                  varsToDrop = NULL, computeInfo = FALSE, allNodes = TRUE)



Arguments

data

a data frame, a character string specifying the .xdf file, or an RxDataSource object. If a local compute context is being used, this argument may also be a list of data sources, in which case the output will be returned in a named list. See the details section for more information.

getValueLabels

logical value. If TRUE, value labels (including factor levels) are included in the output if present.

varsToKeep

character vector of variable names for which information is returned. If NULL, argument is ignored. Cannot be used with varsToDrop.

varsToDrop

character vector of variable names for which information is not returned. If NULL, argument is ignored. Cannot be used with varsToKeep.

computeInfo

logical value. If TRUE, variable information (e.g., high/low values) for non-xdf data sources will be computed by reading through the data set.

allNodes

logical value. Ignored if the active RxComputeContextcompute context is local. Otherwise, if TRUE, a list containing the variable information for the data set on each node in the active compute context will be returned. If FALSE, only information on the data set on the master node will be returned.

Details

Will also give partial information for lists and matrices.

If a local compute context is being used, the data and file arguments may be a list of data source objects, e.g., data = list(iris, airquality, attitude), in which case a named list of results are returned. For rxGetVarInfo, a mix of supported data sources is allowed.

If the RxComputeContext is distributed, rxGetVarInfo will request information from the compute context nodes.

Value

list with named elements corresponding to the variables in the data set. Each list element is also a list with with following possible elements:

description

character string specifying the variable description

varType

character string specifying the variable type

storage

character string specifying the storage type

low

numeric giving the low values, possibly generated through a temporary factor transformation F()

high

numeric giving the high values, possibly generated through a temporary factor transformation F()

levels

(factor only) a character vector containing the factor levels

valueInfoCodes

character vector of value codes, for informational purposes only

valueInfoLabels

character vector of value labels that is the same length as valueInfoCodes, used for informational purposes only

Author(s)

Microsoft Corporation Microsoft Technical Support

See Also

rxSetVarInfo, rxDataStep.

Examples


 # Specify name and location of sample data file
 censusWorkers <- file.path(rxGetOption("sampleDataDir"), "CensusWorkers")

 # Read the variable information
 varInfo <- rxGetVarInfo(censusWorkers)

 # Print the variable information
 varInfo

 # Get variable information about a built-in data frame
 rxGetVarInfo( iris )

 # Obtain variable information on a variety of data sources
 fourthGradersXDF <- file.path(rxGetOption("sampleDataDir"), "fourthgraders.xdf")
 KyphosisDS <- RxXdfData(file.path(rxGetOption("sampleDataDir"), "kyphosis.xdf"))
 rxGetVarInfo(data = list(iris, fourthGradersXDF, KyphosisDS))