[R] sapply to bind columns, with repeat?

[Katrina Bennett]

Hi R-help,

I am working with US COOP network station data and the files are
concatenated in single rows for all years, but I need to pull these
apart into rows for each day. To do this, I need to extract part of
each row such as station id, year, mo, and repeat this against other
variables in the row (days). My problem is that there are repeated
values for each day, and the files are fixed width field without
order.

Here is an example of just one line of data.

coop.raw <- c("DLY09752806TMAX F20100199990620107 00049 20107 00062
B0207 00041 20207 00049 B0307 00040 20307 00041 B0407 00042 20407
00040 B0507 00041 20507 00042 B0607 00043 20607 00041 B0707 00055
20707 00043 B0807 00039 20807 00055 B0907 00037 20907 00039 B1007
00038 21007 00037 B1107 00048 21107 00038 B1207 00050 21207 00048
B1307 00051 21307 00050 B1407 00058 21407 00051 B1507 00068 21507
00058 B1607 00065 21607 00068 B1707 00068 21707 00065 B1807 00067
21807 00068 B1907 00068 21907 00067 B2007 00069 22007 00068 B2107
00057 22107 00069 B2207 00048 22207 00057 B2307 00051 22307 00048
B2407 00073 22407 00051 B2507 00062 22507 00073 B2607 00056 22607
00062 B2707 00053 22707 00056 B2807 00064 22807 00053 B2907 00057
22907 00064 B3007 00047 23007 00057 B3107 00046 23107 00047 B")
write.csv(coop.raw, "coop.tmp", row.names=F, quote=F)
coop.dat <- read.fwf("coop.tmp", widths =
c(c(3,8,4,2,4,2,4,3),rep(c(2,2,1,5,1,1),62)), na.strings=c("9999"),
skip=1, as.is=T)
rep.name <- rep(c("day","hr","met","dat","fl1","fl2"), 62)
rep.count <- rep(c(1:62), each=6, 1)
names(coop.dat) <- c("rect", "id", "elem", "unt", "year", "mo",
"fill", "numval", paste(rep.name, rep.count, sep="_"))

I would like to generate output that contains in one row, the columns
"id", "elem", "unt", "year", "mo", and "numval". Binded to these
initial columns, I would like only "day_1", "hr_1", "met_1", "dat_1",
"fl1_1", and "fl2_1". Then, in the next row I would like repeated the
initial columns "id", "elem", "unt", "year", "mo", and "numval" and
then binded "day_2", "hr_2", "met_2", "dat_2", "fl1_2", and "f2_2" and
so on until all the data for all rows has been allocated. Then, move
onto the next row and repeat.

I think I should be able to do this with some sort of sapply or lapply
function, but I'm struggling with the format for repeating the initial
columns, and then skipping through the next columns.

Thank you,

Katrina