On Fri, 29 May 2015, Nicolas Goaziou wrote:

> Titus von der Malsburg <malsburg@posteo.de> writes:
>
>> On 2015-05-24 Sun 10:09, Thomas S. Dye wrote:
>>> Titus von der Malsburg <malsburg@posteo.de> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 2015-05-24 Sun 08:36, Thomas S. Dye wrote:
>>>>> Titus von der Malsburg <malsburg@posteo.de> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> You got the result of rownames(x), which is expected.  The table you
>>>>>>> expect is given by the following code:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ah, I see, thanks.  Although the results is still somewhat
>>>>>> unexpected.  c("One:", "Two:") doesn’t have rownames and colnames.  So
>>>>>> org apparently made them up when generating the table.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also expected due to :rownames yes :colnames yes.  Without those two
>>>>> header arguments:
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Consider this example:
>>>>
>>>> #+BEGIN_SRC R :results table :exports results :colnames yes :rownames yes
>>>>   v <- c("a", "b")
>>>> #+END_SRC
>>>>
>>>> #+RESULTS:
>>>> |   | x |
>>>> |---+---|
>>>> | 1 | a |
>>>> | 2 | b |
>>>>
>>>> Where is the “x” coming from?  In R, colnames(v) gives me NULL.
>>>
>>> rownames(v) is also NULL.
>>>
>>> You are asking Org mode to produce a table with row and column names
>>> from a vector, which lacks rows and columns.  What behavior do you
>>> expect?
>>
>> Almost anything is better than Org showing me values that do not exist
>> in the original data.  Empty cells for row and columns names are
>> probably the best solution because that would be faithful to the data
>> and to the settings (:rownames yes :colnames yes).
>
> AFAICT, the "x" comes from R, not Org. It could also come from the way
> Org calls R, but I don't know enough of the latter to tell.
>

In particular, `org-babel-R-write-object-command' contains an R
function that processes the object for `:results value'. The guts of
it is a call to write.table(). Here is an example:


#+NAME: show write.table
#+BEGIN_SRC R :results output
   write.table(c("a","b"))
#+END_SRC

#+RESULTS: show write.table
: "x"
: "1" "a"
: "2" "b"

The difficulty is that write.table() coerces its first argument to a 
`data.frame', whence the odd seeming row/column labels.

Making the R code in `org-babel-R-write-object-command' smart enough
to do what the OP wants without breaking stuff might be possible if 
anyone wants to do the work.

However, IMO `:results output' is the way to go for such cases. There are 
plenty of tools in R for formatting output and the user will have better 
control over what is produced.

Chuck