[BioC] Combine two data frames with different columns

[lgautier at altern.org]

> On Feb 1, 2008 7:28 AM, Daniel Brewer <daniel.brewer at icr.ac.uk> wrote:
>> I would like to join two dataframes that have the majority of columns in
>> common but some different.  Let me give you an example:
>>
>> Dataframe 1
>>
>> ID      COL1    COL2    COL3
>> 1       a       a       a
>> 2       b       b       b
>> 3       c       c       c
>>
>> Dataframe 2
>>
>> ID      COL1    COL2    COL4
>> 4       a       a       d
>> 5       b       b       d
>>
>> And the joined dataframe I would like is:
>>
>> ID      COL1    COL2    COL3    COL4
>> 1       a       a       a       NA
>> 2       b       b       b       NA
>> 3       c       c       c       NA
>> 4       a       a       NA      d
>> 5       b       b       NA      d
>>
>> Any ideas?
>
> One solution is in the CRAN package reshape:
>
> df1 <- data.frame(matrix(letters[1:16],nc=4))
> df2 <- data.frame(matrix(letters[1:16],nc=4))
> colnames(df1) <- 1:4
> colnames(df2) <- 2:5
> rbind.fill(df1,df2)
>
>      1 2 3 4    5
> 1    a e i m <NA>
> 2    b f j n <NA>
> 3    c g k o <NA>
> 4    d h l p <NA>
> 5 <NA> a e i    m
> 6 <NA> b f j    n
> 7 <NA> c g k    o
> 8 <NA> d h l    p
>
> There are certainly other answers, but I find the reshape package to
> be a useful one anyway.

An alternative is:
  merge(df1, df2, all=TRUE)