R -- trying to merge data frames with unequal dimensions

Asked Feb 19 '17 at 04:15

Active Feb 19 '17 at 04:22

Viewed 20 times

I have two data frames.

Dataframe 1

NAME    TWEET COUNT
Jill    304
Sara    243
Bill    3022

Dataframe 2

NAME    SEX     STATE
Bill    Male    IL
Jane    Female  MI
Steve   Male    CA
Sara    Female  IN
Jill    Female  AL

I want to

Create a new column in dataframe 2
Plug in the values in dataframe 1 in the rows for which the names match dataframe 1.
Fill in the empty spaces in the column with NA

I don't understand how to do the matching part. How do I compare two dataframe columns with unequal lists?

edited Feb 19 '17 at 04:22

asked Feb 19 '17 at 04:15

Stan Shunpike

Please show small reproducible example and expected output. It seems like a simple `merge` will do it – akrun Feb 19 '17 at 04:16
I updated the question – Stan Shunpike Feb 19 '17 at 04:22
Take a look at the dplyr package. You will need to perform a table join. Most likely a left or full join, but check the documentation for to be sure. – Dave2e Feb 19 '17 at 04:23
@Dave2e these are dataframes though, does that make a difference? – Stan Shunpike Feb 19 '17 at 04:25
2

This is a simple merge, `merge(df2, df1, by = "NAME", all.x=TRUE)` – akrun Feb 19 '17 at 04:26
1

Since "NAME" is common in both data frames you can drop the `by = "NAME"` – R. Schifini Feb 19 '17 at 04:29

0 Answers0