This might be of some use : http://nsaunders.wordpress.com/2010/08/20/a-brief-introduction-to-apply-in-r/

Umair Durrani

email: umairdurrani@outlook.com


> Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 07:30:29 -0800
> From: ronjaq@gmx.net
> To: r-help@r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Apply function to one specific column / Alternative to for loop
> 
> Hi guys, I am a total newbie to R, so I hope this isn't a totally dumb
> question. I have a dataframe with a title in one row and the corresponding
> values in the next rows. Let's take this example: 
> 
> test_df <- data.frame(cbind(titel = "", x = 4:5, y = 1:2))
> test_df = rbind(cbind(titel="1.Test", x="", y=""), test_df,
> cbind(titel="2.Test", x="", y=""), test_df, cbind(titel="3.Test", x="",
> y=""), test_df)
> 
> test_df
>    titel x y
> 1 1.Test    
> 2        4 1
> 3        5 2
> 4 2.Test    
> 5        4 1
> 6        5 2
> 7 3.Test    
> 8        4 1
> 9        5 2
> 
> What I want to have is:
>    titel x y
> 2 1.Test 4 1
> 3 1.Test 5 2
> 5 2.Test 4 1
> 6 2.Test 5 2
> 8 3.Test 4 1
> 9 3.Test 5 2
> 
> In my example, the title is in every third line, but in my real data there
> is no pattern. Each title has at least one line but can have x lines.
> 
> I was able to solve my problem in a for loop with the following code:
> test_df$titel <- as.character(test_df$titel)
> for (i in 1:nrow(test_df))
> {
>   if (nchar(test_df$titel[i])==0){
>     test_df$titel[i]=test_df$titel[i-1]
>   }
> }
> test_df <- subset(test_df,test_df$x!="")
> 
> 
> The problem is, I have a lot of data and the for loop is obviously very
> slow. Is there a more elegant way to achieve the same? I think I have to use
> the apply function, but I don't know how to use it with just one column.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Apply-function-to-one-specific-column-Alternative-to-for-loop-tp4680566.html
> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@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.
 		 	   		  
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

