Split df column of integers into individual digits in R - r

Question

I have a df where one variable is an integer. I'd like to split this column into it's individual digits. See my example below
Group Number
A 456
B 3
C 18
To
Group Number Digit1 Digit2 Digit3
A 456 4 5 6
B 3 3 NA NA
C 18 1 8 NA

Answer 1

We can use read.fwf from base R. Find the max number of character (nchar) in 'Number' column (mx). Read the 'Number' column after converting to character (as.character), specify the 'widths' as 1 by replicating 1 with mx and assign the output to new 'Digit' columns in the data
mx <- max(nchar(df1$Number))
df1[paste0("Digit", seq_len(mx))] <- read.fwf(textConnection(
as.character(df1$Number)), widths = rep(1, mx))
-output
df1
# Group Number Digit1 Digit2 Digit3
#1 A 456 4 5 6
#2 B 3 3 NA NA
#3 C 18 1 8 NA
data
df1 <- structure(list(Group = c("A", "B", "C"), Number = c(456L, 3L,
18L)), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -3L))

Answer 2

Another base R option (I think #akrun's approach using read.fwf is much simpler)
cbind(
df,
with(
df,
type.convert(
`colnames<-`(do.call(
rbind,
lapply(
strsplit(as.character(Number), ""),
`length<-`, max(nchar(Number))
)
), paste0("Digit", seq(max(nchar(Number))))),
as.is = TRUE
)
)
)
which gives
Group Number Digit1 Digit2 Digit3
1 A 456 4 5 6
2 B 3 3 NA NA
3 C 18 1 8 NA

Answer 3

Using splitstackshape::cSplit
splitstackshape::cSplit(df, 'Number', sep = '', stripWhite = FALSE, drop = FALSE)
# Group Number Number_1 Number_2 Number_3
#1: A 456 4 5 6
#2: B 3 3 NA NA
#3: C 18 1 8 NA

Answer 4

Updated
I realized I could use max function for counting characters limit in each row so that I could include it in my map2 function and save some lines of codes thanks to an accident that led to an inspiration by dear #ThomasIsCoding.
library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
library(purrr)
library(stringr)
df %>%
rowwise() %>%
mutate(map2_dfc(Number, 1:max(nchar(Number)), ~ str_sub(.x, .y, .y))) %>%
unnest(cols = !c(Group, Number)) %>%
rename_with(~ str_replace(., "\\.\\.\\.", "Digit"), .cols = !c(Group, Number)) %>%
mutate(across(!c(Group, Number), as.numeric, na.rm = TRUE))
# A tibble: 3 x 5
Group Number Digit1 Digit2 Digit3
<chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1 A 456 4 5 6
2 B 3 3 NA NA
3 C 18 1 8 NA
Data
df <- tribble(
~Group, ~Number,
"A", 456,
"B", 3,
"C", 18
)

Answer 5

Two base r methods:
no_cols <- max(nchar(as.character(df1$Number)))
# Using `strsplit()`:
cbind(df1, setNames(data.frame(do.call(rbind,
lapply(strsplit(as.character(df1$Number), ""),
function(x) {
length(x) <- no_cols
x
}
)
)
), paste0("Digit", seq_len(no_cols))))
# Using `regmatches()` and `gregexpr()`:
cbind(df1, setNames(data.frame(do.call(rbind,
lapply(regmatches(df1$Number, gregexpr("\\d", df1$Number)),
function(x) {
length(x) <- no_cols
x
}
)
)
), paste0("Digit", seq_len(no_cols))))