I think I am overlooking a call or concept in R to help me easily and quickly restructure my data.frame:
 
Sometimes the data I receive looks like:
VariableName, Run1, Run2, Run3, Location
temp,               15.0,  16.0,  17.0, There
 
And other times it looks like: 
VariableName, Run, Location
temp,               17.0, There
 
I would like to use the header information in order to be able to restructure the first data set to have a similar look as the second, i.e. 
 
VariableName, Run, Location,
temp,               15.0,  There # Really Run1
temp,               16.0,  There # Really Run2
temp,               17.0,  There # Really Run3
 
Right now I am manually recombining:
tmp_1<-data.frame(data$VariableName, data$ Run1, data$Location)
tmp_2<-data.frame(data$VariableName, data$ Run2, data$Location)
tmp_3<-data.frame(data$VariableName, data$ Run3, data$Location)
 
combine_1<-rbind(tmp_1, tmp_2)
combine_1<-rbind(combine_1, tmp_3)
 
Is there an easier way that is more flexible?  I would like to make it flexible enough to handle the case where I have two or four runs.  
 
Thank you for any feedback. 


      
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