[R] Reshape or Stack? (To produce output as columns)

[Steve Murray]

Dear all,

I have used 'read.table' to create a data frame of 720 columns and 360 rows (and assigned this to 'Jan'). The row and column names are numeric:

> columnnames <- sprintf("%.2f", seq(from = -179.75, to = 179.75, length = 720)). 
> rnames <- sprintf("%.2f", seq(from = -89.75, to = 89.75, length = 360))
> colnames(Jan) <- columnnames
> rownames(Jan) <- rnames

A sample of the data looks like this:

> head(Jan)
       -179.75 -179.25 -178.75 -178.25 -177.75 -177.25 -176.75 -176.25 -175.75
-89.75   -56.9   -64.2    56.2   -90.0    56.9   -29.0   -91.0   34.0     -9.1
-89.25    37.9    19.3     -0.4   -12.3   -11.8   -92.1     9.2   -23.5     -0.2
-88.75    47.4      3.1   -47.4    46.4    34.2      6.1   -41.3    44.7   -10.3
-88.25   -20.3    34.5   -67.3   -99.9    37.9     -9.3    17.7   -17.2    63.4
-87.75   -46.4    47.4    12.4   -48.3      9.3   -33.8    38.1    10.8   -34.1
-87.25   -48.4    10.3   -89.3   -33.0     -1.1   -33.1    81.2    -8.3   -47.2


I'm hoping to get the whole dataset into the form of columns, so that, for example, the first row (as shown above) would look like this:

Latitude   Longitude   Value
-89.75      -179.75     -56.9
-89.75      -179.25     -64.2
-89.75      -178.75      56.2
-89.75      -178.25     -90.0
-89.75      -177.75      56.9
-89.75      -177.25     -29.0
-89.75      -176.75     -91.0
-89.75      -176.25      34.0
-89.75      -175.75      -9.1


As you can see, this would require the repeated printing of the the row and column names (in this case '-89.75') - so it's not just a case of rearranging the data, but creating 'more' data too.

I've tried to achieve this using 'reshape' and 'stack' (their help files and after looking through the mailing archives), but I'm obviously doing something wrong. For reshape, I'm getting errors relating to the commands I enter, and for stack, I can only produce two columns from my data (with the additional 3rd column being a row count). In any case, these two columns refer to the wrong values (it's producing output in the form of: row count number, Longitude, Value).

I'd be very grateful if anyone could help me out with the commands I need to enter in order to achieve the results I'm hoping for.

Many thanks,

Steve