How to create a similar data frame in R that is empty?

Question

I am new to R and need help. Please help me out in...

How to create a data frame (say myData2) in R that is similar to an existing data frame (say myData1 with 5 columns), but it is blank. That is, the new data frame has 5 columns as are in myData1 but it has no data in the rows.

I want the output to have "0 obs. of 5 variables".

Possible duplicate of [Create an empty data frame with index from another data frame](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18176933/create-an-empty-data-frame-with-index-from-another-data-frame) — ArunK, Jun 29 '16 at 12:00
then probably, rather than creating an empty df, you need to use `merge` instead of `rbind` — Cath, Jun 29 '16 at 12:09
@Arun maybe the same question but different langages, this question is for `R` and the one you're suggesting is `Python`... — Cath, Jun 29 '16 at 12:10
@Cath, My bad. I must have clicked the wrong link. I'm pretty sure I've seen one similar for R too.. Here's the link to one. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9917545/r-define-dimensions-of-empty-data-frame. I'm unsure, how to change the flag status. — ArunK, Jun 29 '16 at 12:17

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 29 '16 at 12:25

Here, assuming the column names and their `data types. However, you can change it according to you requirements

  myData2<- data.frame(x= character(0), y= numeric(0), a = character(0), b= integer(0), c = numeric(0))

  myData2
  # [1] x y a b c
  # <0 rows> (or 0-length row.names)

  str(myData2)
  # 'data.frame':   0 obs. of  5 variables:
  #  $ x: Factor w/ 0 levels: 
  #  $ y: num 
  #  $ a: Factor w/ 0 levels: 
  #  $ b: int 
  #  $ c: num 

  dim(myData2)
  # [1] 0 5

  class(myData2)
  # [1] "data.frame"

How to create a similar data frame in R that is empty?

1 Answers1