Dynamic merge in R - r

I have an example filter table as below and a big source data table. I need to do the merge using these two tables. If no column in the filter table contains ALL, use three columns to do the the merge (using Tran=1001, Acct=1 & Co=a to do the inner join with the data table).If one of them, ie Tran has ALL, use the remaining two columns to do the merge (using Acct=3 & Co=c to do the join). If two of them, ie Tran and Acct, have All, use the remaining one column to do the merge (using Co=b to do the join).
The real question is the number of columns is uncertain.
Can anyone help me with this?
Tran Acct Co
1001 1 a
1002 ALL ALL
ALL ALL b
ALL 4 ALL
1003 2 ALL
ALL 3 c
1004 ALL d

You're going to have to write a series of conditional statements using if, elseif and else. I'll use the %in% operator to check for this. The %in% operator returns a series of boolean values. The easiest way is to show through example:
> x <- c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
> y <- c(2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
> x %in% y
[1] FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
Notice that it returns FALSE for the first value as the value of 1 in x is not in y. You can do the same for the "ALL" value in your data set. I assume you are going row by row as you seemed to imply in your question. Let me know if you need to check the whole column first (you can use the any function for that case). Here is an example of your first condition:
# Assume that df is your data.frame of data.
for (i in 1:length(df$Tran)) {
if (!("All" %in% df$Tran[i]) & !("ALL" %in% df$Acct[i]) & !("All" %in% df$Co[i])) {
# Do your merge here
}
if ( [Put your next condition here] ) {
# Do the appropriate merge for that condition
}
...
Note that I used the "!" operator to get the inverse of whatever %in% returns because you want it to be the case where ALL is NOT in the row. I realize now that you could have just done All != df$Tran[1] since you are going row by row, but %in% might be more useful if you end up going for the whole column.
Hope this helps!
Editing in a new method now that it's more clear what the need is. So we have to find the number of "ALL" values in each row and then merge a certain way depending on the number of them. There are a lot of methods, but here's one I like:
> test <- data.frame(a = "ALL", b = 2, c = "ALL", d = 3, e = "ALL")
> test
a b c d e
1 ALL 2 ALL 3 ALL
> table(test[1, ] == "ALL")["TRUE"]
TRUE
3
Basically, I'm looking at the first row, and getting the number that return TRUE when asked if it contains the string "ALL". From here you can set conditionals on this number. To automate over the entire data frame, throw it in a for loop and set "1" equal to "i" or whatever you sequence variable is.
To get which rows have "ALL" in it (which in converse would tell which rows do not have "ALL" in it as well), you can use grep on each row. Here's a short example:
> # Initializing a sample data frame.
> df <- data.frame(a = "1", b = "ALL", c = "ALL", d = "5", e = "ALL")
> print(df)
a b c d e
1 1 ALL ALL 5 ALL
>
> # Finding the column numbers that have "ALL" in it using grep.
> places <- grep("ALL", df[1, ])
> print(places)
[1] 2 3 5
>
> # Each number corresponds to the order of the columns in the data frame and can be returned as such.
> nameCols <- names(df)[places]
> print(nameCols)
[1] "b" "c" "e"
>
> # Likewise, you can find what columns did not have "ALL" in it by doing the opposite.
> nameColsNOT <- names(df)[-places]
> print(nameColsNOT)
[1] "a" "d"
Iterate this method through a loop for each row in your data frame and use the conditional method I outlined above. Please note that this requires your columns to all be of "character" class, which I assume is the case already.

Related

How to exclude a range of data points by index from a dataframe in R [duplicate]

I have a data frame named "mydata" that looks like this this:
A B C D
1. 5 4 4 4
2. 5 4 4 4
3. 5 4 4 4
4. 5 4 4 4
5. 5 4 4 4
6. 5 4 4 4
7. 5 4 4 4
I'd like to delete row 2,4,6. For example, like this:
A B C D
1. 5 4 4 4
3. 5 4 4 4
5. 5 4 4 4
7. 5 4 4 4
The key idea is you form a set of the rows you want to remove, and keep the complement of that set.
In R, the complement of a set is given by the '-' operator.
So, assuming the data.frame is called myData:
myData[-c(2, 4, 6), ] # notice the -
Of course, don't forget to "reassign" myData if you wanted to drop those rows entirely---otherwise, R just prints the results.
myData <- myData[-c(2, 4, 6), ]
You can also work with a so called boolean vector, aka logical:
row_to_keep = c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE)
myData = myData[row_to_keep,]
Note that the ! operator acts as a NOT, i.e. !TRUE == FALSE:
myData = myData[!row_to_keep,]
This seems a bit cumbersome in comparison to #mrwab's answer (+1 btw :)), but a logical vector can be generated on the fly, e.g. where a column value exceeds a certain value:
myData = myData[myData$A > 4,]
myData = myData[!myData$A > 4,] # equal to myData[myData$A <= 4,]
You can transform a boolean vector to a vector of indices:
row_to_keep = which(myData$A > 4)
Finally, a very neat trick is that you can use this kind of subsetting not only for extraction, but also for assignment:
myData$A[myData$A > 4,] <- NA
where column A is assigned NA (not a number) where A exceeds 4.
Problems with deleting by row number
For quick and dirty analyses, you can delete rows of a data.frame by number as per the top answer. I.e.,
newdata <- myData[-c(2, 4, 6), ]
However, if you are trying to write a robust data analysis script, you should generally avoid deleting rows by numeric position. This is because the order of the rows in your data may change in the future. A general principle of a data.frame or database tables is that the order of the rows should not matter. If the order does matter, this should be encoded in an actual variable in the data.frame.
For example, imagine you imported a dataset and deleted rows by numeric position after inspecting the data and identifying the row numbers of the rows that you wanted to delete. However, at some later point, you go into the raw data and have a look around and reorder the data. Your row deletion code will now delete the wrong rows, and worse, you are unlikely to get any errors warning you that this has occurred.
Better strategy
A better strategy is to delete rows based on substantive and stable properties of the row. For example, if you had an id column variable that uniquely identifies each case, you could use that.
newdata <- myData[ !(myData$id %in% c(2,4,6)), ]
Other times, you will have a formal exclusion criteria that could be specified, and you could use one of the many subsetting tools in R to exclude cases based on that rule.
Create id column in your data frame or use any column name to identify the row. Using index is not fair to delete.
Use subset function to create new frame.
updated_myData <- subset(myData, id!= 6)
print (updated_myData)
updated_myData <- subset(myData, id %in% c(1, 3, 5, 7))
print (updated_myData)
By simplified sequence :
mydata[-(1:3 * 2), ]
By sequence :
mydata[seq(1, nrow(mydata), by = 2) , ]
By negative sequence :
mydata[-seq(2, nrow(mydata), by = 2) , ]
Or if you want to subset by selecting odd numbers:
mydata[which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 == 1) , ]
Or if you want to subset by selecting odd numbers, version 2:
mydata[which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 != 0) , ]
Or if you want to subset by filtering even numbers out:
mydata[!which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 == 0) , ]
Or if you want to subset by filtering even numbers out, version 2:
mydata[!which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 != 1) , ]
For completeness, I'll add that this can be done with dplyr as well using slice. The advantage of using this is that it can be part of a piped workflow.
df <- df %>%
.
.
slice(-c(2, 4, 6)) %>%
.
.
Of course, you can also use it without pipes.
df <- slice(df, -c(2, 4, 6))
The "not vector" format, -c(2, 4, 6) means to get everything that is not at rows 2, 4 and 6. For an example using a range, let's say you wanted to remove the first 5 rows, you could do slice(df, 6:n()). For more examples, see the docs.
Delete Dan from employee.data - No need to manage a new data.frame.
employee.data <- subset(employee.data, name!="Dan")
Here's a quick and dirty function to remove a row by index.
removeRowByIndex <- function(x, row_index) {
nr <- nrow(x)
if (nr < row_index) {
print('row_index exceeds number of rows')
} else if (row_index == 1)
{
return(x[2:nr, ])
} else if (row_index == nr) {
return(x[1:(nr - 1), ])
} else {
return (x[c(1:(row_index - 1), (row_index + 1):nr), ])
}
}
It's main flaw is it the row_index argument doesn't follow the R pattern of being a vector of values. There may be other problems as I only spent a couple of minutes writing and testing it, and have only started using R in the last few weeks. Any comments and improvements on this would be very welcome!
To identify by a name:
Call out the unique ID and identify the location in your data frame (DF).
Mark to delete. If the unique ID applies to multiple rows, all these rows will be removed.
Code:
Rows<-which(grepl("unique ID", DF$Column))
DF2<-DF[-c(Rows),]
DF2
Another approach when working with Unique IDs is to subset data:
*This came from an actual report where I wanted to remove the chemical standard
Chem.Report<-subset(Chem.Report, Chem_ID!="Standard")
Chem_ID is the column name.
The ! is important for excluding

How to assign the column name to the variable dynamically

I am currently developing an application and I need to loop through the columns of the data frame. For instance, if the data frame has the columns
char_set <- data.frame(character(),character(),character(),character(),stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
names(char_set) <- c("a","b","c","d")
If the input is given as "a", then the column name "b" should be assigned to the variable, say promote.
It throws an error Error in[.data.frame(char_set, i + 1) : undefined columns selected. Is there any solution?
char_name <- "a"
char_set <- data.frame(character(),character(),character(),character(),stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
names(char_set) <- c("a","b","c","d")
for (i in 1:ncol(char_set)) {
promote <- ifelse(names(char_set) == char_name,char_set[i+1], "-")
print(promote)
}
Thanks in advance!!!
This is actually quite interesting. I would suggest doing something on those lines:
char_name <- "a"
char_set <- data.frame(
a = 1:2,
b = 3:4,
c = 5:6,
d = 8:9,
stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
res_dta <- data.frame(matrix(nrow = 2, ncol = 3))
for (i in wrapr::seqi(1, NCOL(char_set) - 1)) {
print(i)
if (names(char_set)[i] == char_name) {
res_dta[i] <- char_set[i + 1]
} else {
res_dta[i] <- char_set[i]
}
}
Results
char_set
a b c d
1 1 3 5 8
2 2 4 6 9
res_dta
X1 X2 X3
1 3 3 5
2 4 4 6
There are few generic points:
When you are looping through columns be mindful not fall outside data frame dimensions; running i + 1 on i = 4 will give you column 5 which will return an error for data frame with four columns. You may then decide to run to one column less or break for a specific i value
Not sure if I got your request right, for column names a you want to take values of column b; then column b stays as it was?
Broadly speaking, I'm of a view that this names(char_set)[i] == char_name requires more thought but you have a start with this answer. Updating your post with desired results would help to design a solution.
The problem in your code is that you are looping from 1 to the number of columns of the char_set df, then you are calling the variable char_set[i+1].
This, when the i index takes the maximum value, the instruction char_set[i+1] returns an error because there is no element with that index.
You can try with this solution:
char_name<-"a"
promote<-ifelse((which(names(char_set)==char_name)+1)<ncol(char_set),names(char_set)[which(names(char_set)==char_name)+1],"-")
promote
> [1] "b"
char_name<-"d"
promote<-ifelse((which(names(char_set)==char_name)+1)<ncol(char_set),names(char_set)[which(names(char_set)==char_name)+1],"-")
promote
> [1] "-"
However. when the variable char_name takes the value a, the variable promote will take the value that the set char_set has at the position after the element named a, which matches char_name.
I suggest you to think about the case in which the variable char_name takes the value d and you don't have any values in the char_set after d.

Deleting many, specific rows in R [duplicate]

I have a data frame named "mydata" that looks like this this:
A B C D
1. 5 4 4 4
2. 5 4 4 4
3. 5 4 4 4
4. 5 4 4 4
5. 5 4 4 4
6. 5 4 4 4
7. 5 4 4 4
I'd like to delete row 2,4,6. For example, like this:
A B C D
1. 5 4 4 4
3. 5 4 4 4
5. 5 4 4 4
7. 5 4 4 4
The key idea is you form a set of the rows you want to remove, and keep the complement of that set.
In R, the complement of a set is given by the '-' operator.
So, assuming the data.frame is called myData:
myData[-c(2, 4, 6), ] # notice the -
Of course, don't forget to "reassign" myData if you wanted to drop those rows entirely---otherwise, R just prints the results.
myData <- myData[-c(2, 4, 6), ]
You can also work with a so called boolean vector, aka logical:
row_to_keep = c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE)
myData = myData[row_to_keep,]
Note that the ! operator acts as a NOT, i.e. !TRUE == FALSE:
myData = myData[!row_to_keep,]
This seems a bit cumbersome in comparison to #mrwab's answer (+1 btw :)), but a logical vector can be generated on the fly, e.g. where a column value exceeds a certain value:
myData = myData[myData$A > 4,]
myData = myData[!myData$A > 4,] # equal to myData[myData$A <= 4,]
You can transform a boolean vector to a vector of indices:
row_to_keep = which(myData$A > 4)
Finally, a very neat trick is that you can use this kind of subsetting not only for extraction, but also for assignment:
myData$A[myData$A > 4,] <- NA
where column A is assigned NA (not a number) where A exceeds 4.
Problems with deleting by row number
For quick and dirty analyses, you can delete rows of a data.frame by number as per the top answer. I.e.,
newdata <- myData[-c(2, 4, 6), ]
However, if you are trying to write a robust data analysis script, you should generally avoid deleting rows by numeric position. This is because the order of the rows in your data may change in the future. A general principle of a data.frame or database tables is that the order of the rows should not matter. If the order does matter, this should be encoded in an actual variable in the data.frame.
For example, imagine you imported a dataset and deleted rows by numeric position after inspecting the data and identifying the row numbers of the rows that you wanted to delete. However, at some later point, you go into the raw data and have a look around and reorder the data. Your row deletion code will now delete the wrong rows, and worse, you are unlikely to get any errors warning you that this has occurred.
Better strategy
A better strategy is to delete rows based on substantive and stable properties of the row. For example, if you had an id column variable that uniquely identifies each case, you could use that.
newdata <- myData[ !(myData$id %in% c(2,4,6)), ]
Other times, you will have a formal exclusion criteria that could be specified, and you could use one of the many subsetting tools in R to exclude cases based on that rule.
Create id column in your data frame or use any column name to identify the row. Using index is not fair to delete.
Use subset function to create new frame.
updated_myData <- subset(myData, id!= 6)
print (updated_myData)
updated_myData <- subset(myData, id %in% c(1, 3, 5, 7))
print (updated_myData)
By simplified sequence :
mydata[-(1:3 * 2), ]
By sequence :
mydata[seq(1, nrow(mydata), by = 2) , ]
By negative sequence :
mydata[-seq(2, nrow(mydata), by = 2) , ]
Or if you want to subset by selecting odd numbers:
mydata[which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 == 1) , ]
Or if you want to subset by selecting odd numbers, version 2:
mydata[which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 != 0) , ]
Or if you want to subset by filtering even numbers out:
mydata[!which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 == 0) , ]
Or if you want to subset by filtering even numbers out, version 2:
mydata[!which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 != 1) , ]
For completeness, I'll add that this can be done with dplyr as well using slice. The advantage of using this is that it can be part of a piped workflow.
df <- df %>%
.
.
slice(-c(2, 4, 6)) %>%
.
.
Of course, you can also use it without pipes.
df <- slice(df, -c(2, 4, 6))
The "not vector" format, -c(2, 4, 6) means to get everything that is not at rows 2, 4 and 6. For an example using a range, let's say you wanted to remove the first 5 rows, you could do slice(df, 6:n()). For more examples, see the docs.
Delete Dan from employee.data - No need to manage a new data.frame.
employee.data <- subset(employee.data, name!="Dan")
Here's a quick and dirty function to remove a row by index.
removeRowByIndex <- function(x, row_index) {
nr <- nrow(x)
if (nr < row_index) {
print('row_index exceeds number of rows')
} else if (row_index == 1)
{
return(x[2:nr, ])
} else if (row_index == nr) {
return(x[1:(nr - 1), ])
} else {
return (x[c(1:(row_index - 1), (row_index + 1):nr), ])
}
}
It's main flaw is it the row_index argument doesn't follow the R pattern of being a vector of values. There may be other problems as I only spent a couple of minutes writing and testing it, and have only started using R in the last few weeks. Any comments and improvements on this would be very welcome!
To identify by a name:
Call out the unique ID and identify the location in your data frame (DF).
Mark to delete. If the unique ID applies to multiple rows, all these rows will be removed.
Code:
Rows<-which(grepl("unique ID", DF$Column))
DF2<-DF[-c(Rows),]
DF2
Another approach when working with Unique IDs is to subset data:
*This came from an actual report where I wanted to remove the chemical standard
Chem.Report<-subset(Chem.Report, Chem_ID!="Standard")
Chem_ID is the column name.
The ! is important for excluding

How do I delete rows in a data frame?

I have a data frame named "mydata" that looks like this this:
A B C D
1. 5 4 4 4
2. 5 4 4 4
3. 5 4 4 4
4. 5 4 4 4
5. 5 4 4 4
6. 5 4 4 4
7. 5 4 4 4
I'd like to delete row 2,4,6. For example, like this:
A B C D
1. 5 4 4 4
3. 5 4 4 4
5. 5 4 4 4
7. 5 4 4 4
The key idea is you form a set of the rows you want to remove, and keep the complement of that set.
In R, the complement of a set is given by the '-' operator.
So, assuming the data.frame is called myData:
myData[-c(2, 4, 6), ] # notice the -
Of course, don't forget to "reassign" myData if you wanted to drop those rows entirely---otherwise, R just prints the results.
myData <- myData[-c(2, 4, 6), ]
You can also work with a so called boolean vector, aka logical:
row_to_keep = c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE)
myData = myData[row_to_keep,]
Note that the ! operator acts as a NOT, i.e. !TRUE == FALSE:
myData = myData[!row_to_keep,]
This seems a bit cumbersome in comparison to #mrwab's answer (+1 btw :)), but a logical vector can be generated on the fly, e.g. where a column value exceeds a certain value:
myData = myData[myData$A > 4,]
myData = myData[!myData$A > 4,] # equal to myData[myData$A <= 4,]
You can transform a boolean vector to a vector of indices:
row_to_keep = which(myData$A > 4)
Finally, a very neat trick is that you can use this kind of subsetting not only for extraction, but also for assignment:
myData$A[myData$A > 4,] <- NA
where column A is assigned NA (not a number) where A exceeds 4.
Problems with deleting by row number
For quick and dirty analyses, you can delete rows of a data.frame by number as per the top answer. I.e.,
newdata <- myData[-c(2, 4, 6), ]
However, if you are trying to write a robust data analysis script, you should generally avoid deleting rows by numeric position. This is because the order of the rows in your data may change in the future. A general principle of a data.frame or database tables is that the order of the rows should not matter. If the order does matter, this should be encoded in an actual variable in the data.frame.
For example, imagine you imported a dataset and deleted rows by numeric position after inspecting the data and identifying the row numbers of the rows that you wanted to delete. However, at some later point, you go into the raw data and have a look around and reorder the data. Your row deletion code will now delete the wrong rows, and worse, you are unlikely to get any errors warning you that this has occurred.
Better strategy
A better strategy is to delete rows based on substantive and stable properties of the row. For example, if you had an id column variable that uniquely identifies each case, you could use that.
newdata <- myData[ !(myData$id %in% c(2,4,6)), ]
Other times, you will have a formal exclusion criteria that could be specified, and you could use one of the many subsetting tools in R to exclude cases based on that rule.
Create id column in your data frame or use any column name to identify the row. Using index is not fair to delete.
Use subset function to create new frame.
updated_myData <- subset(myData, id!= 6)
print (updated_myData)
updated_myData <- subset(myData, id %in% c(1, 3, 5, 7))
print (updated_myData)
By simplified sequence :
mydata[-(1:3 * 2), ]
By sequence :
mydata[seq(1, nrow(mydata), by = 2) , ]
By negative sequence :
mydata[-seq(2, nrow(mydata), by = 2) , ]
Or if you want to subset by selecting odd numbers:
mydata[which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 == 1) , ]
Or if you want to subset by selecting odd numbers, version 2:
mydata[which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 != 0) , ]
Or if you want to subset by filtering even numbers out:
mydata[!which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 == 0) , ]
Or if you want to subset by filtering even numbers out, version 2:
mydata[!which(1:nrow(mydata) %% 2 != 1) , ]
For completeness, I'll add that this can be done with dplyr as well using slice. The advantage of using this is that it can be part of a piped workflow.
df <- df %>%
.
.
slice(-c(2, 4, 6)) %>%
.
.
Of course, you can also use it without pipes.
df <- slice(df, -c(2, 4, 6))
The "not vector" format, -c(2, 4, 6) means to get everything that is not at rows 2, 4 and 6. For an example using a range, let's say you wanted to remove the first 5 rows, you could do slice(df, 6:n()). For more examples, see the docs.
Delete Dan from employee.data - No need to manage a new data.frame.
employee.data <- subset(employee.data, name!="Dan")
Here's a quick and dirty function to remove a row by index.
removeRowByIndex <- function(x, row_index) {
nr <- nrow(x)
if (nr < row_index) {
print('row_index exceeds number of rows')
} else if (row_index == 1)
{
return(x[2:nr, ])
} else if (row_index == nr) {
return(x[1:(nr - 1), ])
} else {
return (x[c(1:(row_index - 1), (row_index + 1):nr), ])
}
}
It's main flaw is it the row_index argument doesn't follow the R pattern of being a vector of values. There may be other problems as I only spent a couple of minutes writing and testing it, and have only started using R in the last few weeks. Any comments and improvements on this would be very welcome!
To identify by a name:
Call out the unique ID and identify the location in your data frame (DF).
Mark to delete. If the unique ID applies to multiple rows, all these rows will be removed.
Code:
Rows<-which(grepl("unique ID", DF$Column))
DF2<-DF[-c(Rows),]
DF2
Another approach when working with Unique IDs is to subset data:
*This came from an actual report where I wanted to remove the chemical standard
Chem.Report<-subset(Chem.Report, Chem_ID!="Standard")
Chem_ID is the column name.
The ! is important for excluding

Does column exist and how to rearrange columns in R data frame

How do I add a column in the middle of an R data frame? I want to see if I have a column named "LastName" and then add it as the third column if it does not already exist.
One approach is to just add the column to the end of the data frame, and then use subsetting to move it into the desired position:
d$LastName <- c("Flim", "Flom", "Flam")
bar <- d[c("x", "y", "Lastname", "fac")]
1) Testing for existence: Use %in% on the colnames, e.g.
> example(data.frame) # to get 'd'
> "fac" %in% colnames(d)
[1] TRUE
> "bar" %in% colnames(d)
[1] FALSE
2) You essentially have to create a new data.frame from the first half of the old, your new column, and the second half:
> bar <- data.frame(d[1:3,1:2], LastName=c("Flim", "Flom", "Flam"), fac=d[1:3,3])
> bar
x y LastName fac
1 1 1 Flim C
2 1 2 Flom A
3 1 3 Flam A
>
Of the many silly little helper functions I've written, this gets used every time I load R. It just makes a list of the column names and indices but I use it constantly.
##creates an object from a data.frame listing the column names and location
namesind=function(df){
temp1=names(df)
temp2=seq(1,length(temp1))
temp3=data.frame(temp1,temp2)
names(temp3)=c("VAR","COL")
return(temp3)
rm(temp1,temp2,temp3)
}
ni <- namesind
Use ni to see your column numbers. (ni is just an alias for namesind, I never use namesind but thought it was a better name originally) Then if you want insert your column in say, position 12, and your data.frame is named bob with 20 columns, it would be
bob2 <- data.frame(bob[,1:11],newcolumn, bob[,12:20]
though I liked the add at the end and rearrange answer from Hadley as well.
Dirk Eddelbuettel's answer works, but you don't need to indicate row numbers or specify entries in the lastname column. This code should do it for a data frame named df:
if(!("LastName" %in% names(df))){
df <- cbind(df[1:2],LastName=NA,df[3:length(df)])
}
(this defaults LastName to NA, but you could just as easily use "LastName='Smith'")
or using cbind:
> example(data.frame) # to get 'd'
> bar <- cbind(d[1:3,1:2],LastName=c("Flim", "Flom", "Flam"),fac=d[1:3,3])
> bar
x y LastName fac
1 1 1 Flim A
2 1 2 Flom B
3 1 3 Flam B
I always thought something like append() [though unfortunate the name is] should be a generic function
## redefine append() as generic function
append.default <- append
append <- `body<-`(args(append),value=quote(UseMethod("append")))
append.data.frame <- function(x,values,after=length(x))
`row.names<-`(data.frame(append.default(x,values,after)),
row.names(x))
## apply the function
d <- (if( !"LastName" %in% names(d) )
append(d,values=list(LastName=c("Flim","Flom","Flam")),after=2) else d)

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