For loop to paste rows to create new dataframe from existing dataframe - r

Question

New to SO, but can't figure out how to get this code to work. I have a dataframe that is very large, and is set up like this:
Number Year Type Amount
1 1 A 5
1 2 A 2
1 3 A 7
1 4 A 1
1 1 B 5
1 2 B 11
1 3 B 0
1 4 B 2
This goes onto multiple for multiple numbers. I want to take this dataframe and make a new dataframe that has two of the rows together, but it would be nested (for example, row 1 and row 2, row 1 and row 3, row 1 and row 4, row 2 and row 3, row 2 and row 4) where each combination of each year is together within types and numbers.
Example output:
Number Year Type Amount Number Year Type Amount
1 1 A 5 1 2 A 2
1 1 A 5 1 3 A 7
1 1 A 5 1 4 A 1
1 2 A 2 1 3 A 7
1 2 A 2 1 4 A 1
1 3 A 7 1 4 A 1
I thought that I would do a for loop to loop within number and type, but I do not know how to make the rows paste from there, or how to ensure that I am only getting the combinations of the rows once. For example:
for(i in 1:n_number){
for(j in 1:n_type){
....}}
Any tips would be appreciated! I am relatively new to coding, so I don't know if I should be using a for loop at all. Thank you!

Answer 1

df <- data.frame(Number= rep(1,8),
Year = rep(c(1:4),2),
Type = rep(c('A','B'),each=4),
Amount=c(5,2,7,1,5,11,0,2))
My interpretation is that you want to create a dataframe with all row combinations, where Number and Type are the same and Year is different.
First suggestion - join on Number and Type, then remove rows that have different Year. I added an index to prevent redundant matches (1 with 2 and 2 with 1).
df$index <- 1:nrow(df)
out <- merge(df,df,by=c("Number","Type"))
out <- out[which(out$index.x>out$index.y & out$Year.x!=out$Year.y),]
Second suggestion - if you want to see a version using a loop.
out2 <- NULL
for (i in c(1:(nrow(df)-1))){
for (j in c((i+1):nrow(df))){
if(df[i,"Year"]!=df[j,"Year"] & df[i,"Number"]==df[j,"Number"] & df[i,"Type"]==df[j,"Type"]){
out2 <- rbind(out2,cbind(df[i,],df[j,]))
}
}
}