[R] SPSS command "match files" for merging one-to-many (hierarchical) equivalent in R?

[Marc Schwartz]

> On Mar 9, 2015, at 1:53 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 09/03/2015 1:40 PM, Kristina Loderer wrote:
>> Dear R community,
>> 
>> to combine data sets of hierarchical, nested nature (i.e., data sets
>> linked by, for example, the variable "study ID" and then also by
>> "outcome_variable_1" and "outcome_variable_2") I can use the match files
>> command in SPSS. What is the equivalent command / function in R? Is it
>> the merge function, or the match function? The more I read, the more
>> confused I become..
>> 
> 
> I don't know SPSS at all, so I can't help you.  If nobody else does, you might try putting together a tiny example in R showing what you're starting with, and what you want to produce.  From what you wrote, I'd guess merge(), not match(), but you might really be asking for something completely different.
> 
> Duncan Murdoch


Based upon the info here:

  http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/spss/modules/merge.htm

I would go with ?merge, since the desired functionality appears to be a relational join operation.

Regards,

Marc Schwartz