Preserve (atomic) attributes to data frames and data frame columns?

[SebKrantz]

Hello, thanks for developing this package. This question has probably be asked in some form but I did not come across it yet: It would be nice if data frame attributes (such as the class) and other atomic attributes to columns (such as variable labels) could be preserved in the format. For example If I load a survey into R from STATA file format using the haven library, I get a tibble with "label" attributes to the columns. It would be great if I can save that and load it again. Many people are managing data in commercial software like STATA, SPSS or SAS which are translated into R in slightly more complex file formats with additional attributes attached to the data frame or columns in the data frame.

[januz]

I came here with the same request! Even when not working with data from statistical packages like STATA, SPSS, or SAS, I like to label my data using the sjlabelled package for ease of switching between variable names and labels or values and labels, e.g., for plots and tables. One can use qs as it conserves all attributes, but I would love to use fst because of its capability of reading partial rows/columns from file. Thank you!

[benzipperer]

Just want to add my vote for this feature. We would love to use fst, but for now we're using arrow because of its compability with STATA-style label attributes available through haven.