[R] Combine two variables

[arun]

Hi,
  I am not sure how you describe combine. 

Try this:
df1<-subset(df, !is.na(var1) &!is.na(var2))

df1$new<-paste0(df1$var1,df1$var2)
> head(df1)
#  var1 var2 new
#1    b    a  ba
#2    c    b  cb
#3    b    b  bb
#5    a    a  aa
#6    b    b  bb
#7    a    b  ab
A.K.



----- Original Message -----
From: Simon Kiss <sjkiss at gmail.com>
To: r-help at r-project.org
Cc: 
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2012 10:57 AM
Subject: [R] Combine two variables

Hi:
I have two variables in a data frame that are the results of a wording experiment in a survey. I'd like to create a third variable that combines the two variables.  Recode doesn't seem to work, because it just recodes the first variable into the third, then recodes the second variable into the third, overwriting the first recode. I can do this with a rather elaborate indexing process, subsetting the first column and then copying the data into the second etc. But I'm looking for a cleaner way to do this. The data frame looks like this.


df<-data.frame(var1=sample(c('a','b','c',NA),replace=TRUE, size=100), var2=sample(c('a','b','c',NA),replace=TRUE,size=100))

df<-subset(df, !is.na(var1) |!is.na(var2))

As you can see, if one variable has an NA, then the other variable has a valid value, so how do I just combine the two variables into one?
Thank you for your assistance.
Simon Kiss

______________________________________________
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.