Drop unused factor levels in a subsetted data frame

Question

I have a data frame containing a factor. When I create a subset of this dataframe using subset or another indexing function, a new data frame is created. However, the factor variable retains all of its original levels, even when/if they do not exist in the new dataframe.

This causes problems when doing faceted plotting or using functions that rely on factor levels.

What is the most succinct way to remove levels from a factor in the new dataframe?

Here's an example:

df <- data.frame(letters=letters[1:5],
                    numbers=seq(1:5))

levels(df$letters)
## [1] "a" "b" "c" "d" "e"

subdf <- subset(df, numbers <= 3)
##   letters numbers
## 1       a       1
## 2       b       2
## 3       c       3    

# all levels are still there!
levels(subdf$letters)
## [1] "a" "b" "c" "d" "e"

Answer 1

Since R version 2.12, there's a droplevels() function.

levels(droplevels(subdf$letters))