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R 3.0.3: I have 40 csv files all structured the same that I want to rbind into one file so I can calculate the mean of one column.

I searched:

  • this website
  • R in a Nutshell
  • R_Intro sources
  • ?rbind Help in RStudio

I cannot find the answer.

Any suggestions/pointers?

KobeJohn
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user3551565
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2 Answers2

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Using the answer from here [Importing several files and indexing them ]

list files with .csv extension - this assumes that the only .csv files in your working directory are the ones you want to read

files  <- list.files(pattern = '\\.csv')

read files into a list - are there headers?

tables <- lapply(files, read.csv, header = TRUE)

rbind files

combined.df <- do.call(rbind , tables)

You can then find the mean - find which columns are numeric

s <- sapply(combined.df, is.numeric)

find the mean of numeric variables

colMeans(combined.df[s])
Community
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user20650
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  • .@user20650 - Thank you for your answer. If before `rbind()`, I want to add a unique identifier (numeric like 0,1,2 etc) that can help me distinguish which data is from file 1 and which is from file , then how can I achieve this? I am currently trying `loop()`, but it's getting a bit messy. – Chetan Arvind Patil Feb 04 '18 at 20:36
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    @ChetanArvindPatil ; at the read in stage, you could add the file names with `tables – user20650 Feb 04 '18 at 20:51
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In more contemporary plyr approach:

files <- list.files(...)
data <- adply(files, 1, read.table)

(it's saturday afternoon: untested code, but the approach is fine)

Paul Lemmens
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