What is R DataFrame?

R code that builds a data.frame from character vectors.

Who uses it

Statistics and R notebooks.

Writing R DataFrame

stringsAsFactors is set to FALSE explicitly. It has defaulted to FALSE since R 4.0, but being explicit means the snippet behaves the same on older installs.

What it can hold

R data frame is source code. Columns are typed vectors and NA is a first-class value distinct from an empty string. A machine can read the table back out of it without guessing, which is what makes it safe to convert into and out of.

It keeps

Types. A number stays a number and a boolean stays a boolean, so whatever reads the file next does not have to guess from how a value looks.
The difference between empty and missing, which most table formats cannot express at all.
A line break inside a cell, which survives rather than ending the row.
A header that is marked as one, rather than being the first row by convention.

It cannot express

Nesting. Cells are flat, so structured values have to be flattened into extra columns or written into one cell as text.
Any formatting. Bold, colour, column widths and merged cells have nowhere to go.
A partial read. The document has to be complete to mean anything, so a truncated file yields nothing and a large one has to be held in memory whole.

What it looks like

Example R DataFrame

staff <- data.frame(
  id = c("007", "012", "104"),
  name = c("Halima Yusuf", "Jonah \"Jo\" Pryce", "Wei Chen"),
  role = c("Analyst, data", "Engineer", "Manager"),
  started = c("2024-03-15", "2025-11-02", "2023-06-30"),
  hours = c("38.5", "", "40")
  , stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

Questions

How do I open R DataFrame files?

R DataFrame is written by Tablizer rather than read by it. Open the file in whichever tool the format belongs to.

Is R DataFrame a good format for sharing data?

It depends who is receiving it. Statistics and R notebooks. If the recipient is outside that group, a plain CSV travels further than anything else.