Convert data frame from wide to long with 2 variables

Question

I have the following wide data frame (mydf.wide):

DAY JAN F1  FEB F2  MAR F3  APR F4  MAY F5  JUN F6  JUL F7  AUG F8  SEP F9  OCT F10 NOV F11 DEC F12
1   169 0   296 0   1095    0   599 0   1361    0   1746    0   2411    0   2516    0   1614    0   908 0   488 0   209 0
2   193 0   554 0   1085    0   1820    0   1723    0   2787    0   2548    0   1402    0   1633    0   897 0   411 0   250 0
3   246 0   533 0   1111    0   1817    0   2238    0   2747    0   1575    0   1912    0   705 0   813 0   156 0   164 0
4   222 0   547 0   1125    0   1789    0   2181    0   2309    0   1569    0   1798    0   1463    0   878 0   241 0   230 0

I want to produce the following "semi-long":

DAY variable_month value_month value_F
1 JAN 169 0

I tried:

library(reshape2)
mydf.long <- melt(mydf.wide, id.vars=c("YEAR","DAY"), measure.vars=c("JAN","FEB","MAR","APR","MAY","JUN","JUL","AUG","SEP","OCT","NOV","DEC"))

but this skip the F variable and I don't know how to deal with two variables...

Answer 1

This is one of those cases where reshape(...) in base R is a better option.

months    <- c(2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24)   # column numbers of months
F         <- c(3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25)   # column numbers of Fn
mydf.long <- reshape(mydf.wide,idvar=1,
             times=colnames(mydf.wide)[months],
             varying=list(months,F),
             v.names=c("value_month","value_F"),
             direction="long")
colnames(mydf.long)[2] <- "variable_month"
head(mydf.long)
#       DAY variable_month value_month value_F
# 1.JAN   1            JAN         169       0
# 2.JAN   2            JAN         193       0
# 3.JAN   3            JAN         246       0
# 4.JAN   4            JAN         222       0
# 1.FEB   1            FEB         296       0
# 2.FEB   2            FEB         554       0

You can also do this with 2 calls to melt(...)

library(reshape2)
months    <- c(2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22,24)   # column numbers of months
F         <- c(3,5,7,9,11,13,15,17,19,21,23,25)   # column numbers of Fn
z.1 <- melt(mydf.wide,id=1,measure=months,
            variable.name="variable_month",value.name="value_month")
z.2 <- melt(mydf.wide,id=1,measure=F,value.name="value_F")
mydf.long <- cbind(z.1,value_F=z.2$value_F)
head(mydf.long)
#   DAY variable_month value_month z.2$value_F
# 1   1            JAN         169           0
# 2   2            JAN         193           0
# 3   3            JAN         246           0
# 4   4            JAN         222           0
# 5   1            FEB         296           0
# 6   2            FEB         554           0

Answer 2

melt() and dcast() are available from the reshape2 and data.table packages. The recent versions of data.table allow to melt multiple columns simultaneously. The patterns() parameter can be used to specify the two sets of columns by regular expressions:

library(data.table)   # CRAN version 1.10.4 used
regex_month <- toupper(paste(month.abb, collapse = "|"))
mydf.long <- melt(setDT(mydf.wide), measure.vars = patterns(regex_month, "F\\d"),
                  value.name = c("MONTH", "F"))
# rename factor levels
mydf.long[, variable := forcats::lvls_revalue(variable, toupper(month.abb))][]

    DAY variable MONTH F
 1:   1      JAN   169 0
 2:   2      JAN   193 0
 3:   3      JAN   246 0
 4:   4      JAN   222 0
 5:   1      FEB   296 0
...
44:   4      NOV   241 0
45:   1      DEC   209 0
46:   2      DEC   250 0
47:   3      DEC   164 0
48:   4      DEC   230 0
    DAY variable MONTH F

Note that "F\\d" is used as regular expression in patterns(). A simple "F" would have catched FEB as well as F1, F2, etc. producing unexpected results.

Also note that mydf.wide needs to be coerced to a data.table object. Otherwise, reshape2::melt() will be dispatched on a data.frame object which doesn't recognize patterns().

Data

library(data.table)
mydf.wide <- fread(
"DAY JAN F1  FEB F2  MAR F3  APR F4  MAY F5  JUN F6  JUL F7  AUG F8  SEP F9  OCT F10 NOV F11 DEC F12
  1   169 0   296 0   1095    0   599 0   1361    0   1746    0   2411    0   2516    0   1614    0   908 0   488 0   209 0
  2   193 0   554 0   1085    0   1820    0   1723    0   2787    0   2548    0   1402    0   1633    0   897 0   411 0   250 0
  3   246 0   533 0   1111    0   1817    0   2238    0   2747    0   1575    0   1912    0   705 0   813 0   156 0   164 0
  4   222 0   547 0   1125    0   1789    0   2181    0   2309    0   1569    0   1798    0   1463    0   878 0   241 0   230 0",
data.table = FALSE)