[R] combining two columns into one column despite NAs

[Phil Spector]

Andrew -
    I believe

character.data$z = ifelse(is.na(character.data$x),
                           character.data$y,character.data$x)

should do what you want.
 					- Phil Spector
 					 Statistical Computing Facility
 					 Department of Statistics
 					 UC Berkeley
 					 spector at stat.berkeley.edu


On Thu, 24 Feb 2011, Andrew Anglemyer wrote:

> Thanks!  Unfortunately, in my effort to simply the question, I didn't really
> adequately describe the problem.  This solution is perfect in the numeric
> case I presented, but what about in the case of character classes!  Let me
> try again:
>
> I have
>> character.data
>           id     x        y
>       1   1    "a"    NA
>       2   2    "b"     "b"
>       3   3    "c"      "c"
>       4   4   NA      "d"
>
>
> And I want first
>> new.character.data
>           id     x        y        z
>       1   1    "a"    NA      "a"
>       2   2    "b"     "b"     "b"
>       3   3    "c"      "c"    "c"
>       4   4   NA      "d"     "d"
>
> Thanks again!
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Ista Zahn <izahn at psych.rochester.edu>wrote:
>
>> I think the easiest way is probably
>>
>> data$z <- rowMeans(data[, c("x", "y")], na.rm=TRUE)
>>
>> Best,
>> Ista
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 12:12 AM, Andrew Anglemyer
>> <andrew.anglemyer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I am trying to combine two columns in a data frame into one column.  Some
>>> values in either column are missing, but not in the same row for the two
>>> different columns.  Additionally, when both columns in a row contain
>> data,
>>> the data are identical.  I want a new column with the identical data or
>> the
>>> data from the column with observed data.  For example:
>>>
>>> I have
>>>> data
>>>           id   x    y
>>>       1   a   1   NA
>>>       2   b   2    2
>>>       3   c   3    3
>>>       4   d  NA  4
>>>
>>> And I want
>>>> new.data
>>>           id   x    y     z
>>>       1   a   1   NA   1
>>>       2   b   2    2     2
>>>       3   c   3    3     3
>>>       4   d  NA  4     4
>>>
>>> I've looked through the help and there are column combining solutions,
>> but
>>> they don't seem to work well for this solution.
>>> Thanks for any help!
>>> Andy
>>>
>>>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ista Zahn
>> Graduate student
>> University of Rochester
>> Department of Clinical and Social Psychology
>> http://yourpsyche.org
>>
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>