R Using a for() loop to fill one dataframe with another - r

Question

I have two dataframes and I wish to insert the values of one dataframe into another (let's call them DF1 and DF2).
DF1 consists of 2 columns 1 and 2. Column 1 (col1) contains characters a to z and col2 has values associated with each character (from a to z)
DF2 is a dataframe with 3 columns. The first two consist of every combination of DF1$col1 so: aa ab ac ad etc; where the first letter is in col1 and the second letter is in col2
I want to create a simple mathematical model utilizing the values in DF1$col2 to see the outcomes of every possible combination of objects in DF1$col1
The first step I wanted to do is to transfer values from DF1$col2 to DF2$col3 (values from DF2$col3 should be associated to values in DF2col1), but that's where I'm stuck. I currently have
for(j in 1:length(DF2$col1))
{
## this part is to use the characters in DF2$col1 as an input
## to yield the output for DF2$col3--
input=c(DF2$col1)[j]
## This is supposed to use the values found in DF1$col2 to fill in DF2$col3
g=DF1[(DF1$col2==input),"pred"]
## This is so that the values will fill in DF2$col3--
DF2$col3=g
}
When I run this, DF2$col3 will be filled up with the same value for a specific character from DF1 (e.g. DF2$col3 will have all the rows filled with the value associated with character "a" from DF1)
What exactly am I doing wrong?
Thanks a bunch for your time

Answer 1

You should really use merge for this as #Aaron suggested in his comment above, but if you insist on writing your own loop, than you have the problem in your last line, as you assign g value to the whole col3 column. You should use the j index there also, like:
for(j in 1:length(DF2$col1))
{
DF2$col3[j] = DF1[(which(DF1$col2 == DF2$col1[j]), "pred"]
}
If this would not work out, than please also post some sample database to be able to help in more details (as I do not know, but have a gues what could be "pred").

Answer 2

It sounds like what you are trying to do is a simple join, that is, match DF1$col1 to DF2$col1 and copy the corresponding value from DF1$col2 into DF2$col3. Try this:
DF1 <- data.frame(col1=letters, col2=1:26, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
DF2 <- expand.grid(col1=letters, col2=letters, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
DF2$col3 <- DF1$col2[match(DF2$col1, DF1$col1)]
This uses the function match(), which, as the documentation states, "returns a vector of the positions of (first) matches of its first argument in its second." The values you have in DF1$col1 are unique, so there will not be any problem with this method.
As a side note, in R it is usually better to vectorize your work rather than using explicit loops.

Answer 3

Not sure I fully understood your question, but you can try this:
df1 <- data.frame(col1=letters[1:26], col2=sample(1:100, 26))
df2 <- with(df1, expand.grid(col1=col1, col2=col1))
df2$col3 <- df1$col2
The last command use recycling (it could be writtent as rep(df1$col2, 26) as well).
The results are shown below:
> head(df1, n=3)
col1 col2
1 a 68
2 b 73
3 c 45
> tail(df1, n=3)
col1 col2
24 x 22
25 y 4
26 z 17
> head(df2, n=3)
col1 col2 col3
1 a a 68
2 b a 73
3 c a 45
> tail(df2, n=3)
col1 col2 col3
674 x z 22
675 y z 4
676 z z 17