How to make write.table retain dimnames? - r

Question

I need to save a number of tables in a single CSV file and am having difficulty seeing how to retain dimension names. I searched SO and the closest I found was:
How to get dimnames in xtable.table output?
The problem he has with xtable is the problem I've got with write.table – dimnames exist in the table (and prop.table and ftable as well if I use that) but get dropped by write.table. I'm using write.table not write.csv for append=T.
The dataset is from a survey and the aim is to create the complete set of crosstabs, with labelled axes. In this case, actual row/column labels are not important, only dimension labels. I'm new to R, so hope I haven't missed something obvious.
d<-read.csv('dataset.csv') # dataset with column headings, no row labels
cat('BEGIN\n',file='xtabs.csv')
for (i in 1:ncol(d)) {
for (j in 1:ncol(d)) {
cat(paste('\ni=',i,' j=',j,'\n'),file='xtabs.csv',append=T)
t<-table(d[,i],d[,j],dnn=c(names(d[i]),names(d[j])))
pt<-prop.table(t,1)
write.table(pt,'xtabs.csv',sep=',',dec='.',row.names=F,col.names=F,append=T)
print(pt) # shows dimnames in the console as expected
}
}

Answer 1

Try this:
tbl <- with(warpbreaks, table(wool, tension))
pt <- prop.table(tbl)
write.ftable(ftable(pt),file = "~/Desktop/table.csv", sep = ",",
quote = FALSE)
I'm possibly abusing ftables here, which are intended for multi-dimensional tabular data (i.e. more than two variables). But it's the only thing I've found that will write the table to a text file with (seemingly) the formatting you want.