Hi Patrick,

Patrick Durusau wrote:

Maybe I was not able to clearly explain what I meant.

In simple words, I wanted an *enhanced function corresponding* to the *pivot tables*. Well, maybe it is now easier to understand. Current implementations of pivot tables seem quite weak to me. And they are NOT functions. I therefore do want: - something more advanced - easily expandable / flexible - and defined as spreadsheet functions

The function DISTINCT() was meant as the first step in this process. This would generate the groups of data / make the categories. Indeed, these categories would behave like factors (in R, and generally in statistics, these are called factors - respectively levels of a variable). Further functions should have followed, which would generate the various reports (these would imply extensive vector operations). Indeed, factors are extensively used in vector/matrix operations.

## THIS IS A SIDE NOTE - the previous WARNING is irrelevant both to ODF and to R-users that stick to the S+ standard - for someone working with factors, it is irrelevant how factors are *INTERNALLY* stored in R - 'is.factor()' will ALWAYS return TRUE for a factor-object irrespective of its internal storage ('as.factor()' interprets something as a factor) - internally (in R), factors are currently stored in a way that uses integers - THIS data structure should however NEVER be known nor assumed by users, and therefore, it should NEVER be used (as open-source, of course you can get the details) - these are hidden methods (thats why you declare 'private' and 'protected' in C++ classes, to hide the implementation) - however, obviously, there are users who make use of this and even worse, perform mathematical calculations with factors (it makes NO sense to compare mathematically a level "A" with a level "B", or with an integer, BUT some do exactly that)

## END SIDE NOTE

## SIDE NOTE - 'is.factor()' and 'as.factor()' WILL work as expected in R even in the future - users who interpret this result as an integer are affected, and I fully support this idea, they should have never supposed those factors to be stored as integers - *A factor may be purely nominal or may have ordered categories*!!! NO mention of integers. ## END SIDE NOTE

CONCLUSIONS ============ Indeed, spreadsheets should have functions that perform assignment of some data into *categories*. DISTINCT() was supposed to do so. These categories would then behave like the described factors. Pivot Tables (aka Data Tables) do currently similar things, though I wanted something more advanced. And I wanted a function.

Hope this explanation clarifies some of the issues.

Sincerely,

Leonard