r - read.table, one line matrices, etc -

i'm struggling presumably simple issue cannot fix, possibly want of right keywords up...

i have following file (test.data):

th  ba  rb  la  ce  nd  sm  eu pm  0.0813  6.049   0.5353  0.6139  1.6011  1.1892  0.3865  0.1456 v.morb  0.333   0.459   0.356   0.261   0.224       0.203   0.189 

note tab-separated (not visible on screen, sorry), no trailing tabs, 1 item less in first line parsed colnames. note there missing item (second line, col. "nd"); totally empty in file (i.e. 2 successive tabs, nothing in between)

> foo<-read.table("test.data",sep="\t") > foo            th    ba     rb     la     ce     nd     sm     eu pm     0.0813 6.049 0.5353 0.6139 1.6011 1.1892 0.3865 0.1456 v.morb 0.3330 0.459 0.3560 0.2610 0.2240     na 0.2030 0.1890 > rownames(foo) [1] "pm"     "v.morb" > colnames(foo) [1] "th" "ba" "rb" "la" "ce" "nd" "sm" "eu" 

looks me.

now:

> y<-c(1,2,3,4) > plot(x=foo["pm",1:4],y=y) error in xy.coords(x, y, xlabel, ylabel, log) :    'x' , 'y' lengths differ 

why ? probably, because

> foo["pm",1:4]        th    ba     rb     la pm 0.0813 6.049 0.5353 0.6139 > y [1] 1 2 3 4 

foo , y 2 different kind of animals !

still, routinely subset , plot matrices, what's wrong foo, , how cure it?

thanks

jeff

update:

> str(foo) 'data.frame':   2 obs. of  8 variables:  $ th: num  0.0813 0.333  $ ba: num  6.049 0.459  $ rb: num  0.535 0.356  $ la: num  0.614 0.261  $ ce: num  1.601 0.224  $ nd: num  1.19 0  $ sm: num  0.387 0.203  $ eu: num  0.146 0.189 

update update (sorry):

> plot(x=foo[1,1:4],y=y) error in xy.coords(x, y, xlabel, ylabel, log) :    'x' , 'y' lengths differ 

ok, know that.

but

 > plot(x=foo[1,1:2],y=y[1:2])     > plot(x=foo[1:2,1],y=y[1:2]) 

both work happily. i'm lost. why foo[1,1:2] , foo[1,1:4] behave differently?