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I'm using the rep() function to repeat each element in a string a number of times. Each character I have contains information for a state, and I need the first three elements of the character vector repeated three times, and the fourth element repeated five times.
So lets say I have the following character vectors.
al <- c("AlabamaCity", "AlabamaCityST", "AlabamaCityState", "AlabamaZipCode")
ak <- c("AlaskaCity", "AlaskaCityST", "AlaskaCityState", "AlaskaZipCode")
az <- c("ArizonaCity", "ArizonaCityST", "ArizonaCityState", "ArizonaZipCode")
ar <- c("ArkansasCity", "ArkansasCityST", "ArkansasCityState", "ArkansasZipCode")
I want to end up having the following output.
AlabamaCity
AlabamaCity
AlabamaCity
AlabamaCityST
AlabamaCityST
AlabamaCityST
AlabamaCityState
AlabamaCityState
AlabamaCityState
AlabamaZipCode
AlabamaZipCode
AlabamaZipCode
AlabamaZipCode
AlabamaZipCode
AlabamaZipCode
...
I was able to get the desired output with the following command, but it's a little inconvenient when I'm running through all fifty states. Plus, I might have another column with 237 cities in Alabama, and I'll inevitably run into problems matching up the names in the first column with the values in the second column.
dat = data.frame(name=c(rep(al[1:3],each=3), rep(al[4],each=6),
rep(ak[1:3],each=3), rep(ak[4],each=6)))
dat
dat2 = data.frame(name=c(rep(al[1:3],each=3), rep(al[4],each=6),
rep(ak[1:3],each=3), rep(ak[4],each=6)),
city=c(rep("x",each=15), rep("y",each=15)))
dat2
Of course, in real life, the 'x' and 'y' won't be single values.
So my question concerns if there is a more efficient way of performing this task. And closely related to the question, when does it become important to ditch procedural programming in favor of OOP in R. (not a programmer, so the second part may be a really stupid question) More importantly, is this a task where I should look for a oop related solution.
237
repeated = new String(new char[n]). replace("\0", s); Where n is the number of times you want to repeat the string and s is the string to repeat. No imports or libraries needed.
Syntax: string. repeat(count); Parameter: Accepts an integer count which is the number of times we want to repeat the string.
In Python, we utilize the asterisk operator to repeat a string. This operator is indicated by a “*” sign. This operator iterates the string n (number) of times.
Using the * Operator The * operator can also be used to repeat elements of a list. When we multiply a list with any number using the * operator, it repeats the elements of the given list. Here, we just have to keep in mind that to repeat the elements n times, we will have to multiply the list by (n+1).
According to ?rep, times= can be a vector. So, how about this:
dat <- data.frame(name=rep(al, times=c(3,3,3,6)))
It would also be more convenient if your "state" data were in a list.
stateData <- list(al,ak,az,ar)
Data <- lapply(stateData, function(x) data.frame(name=rep(x, times=c(3,3,3,6))))
Data <- do.call(rbind, Data)
I think you can combine the times() argument of rep to work through a list with sapply(). So first, we need to make our list object:
vars <- list(al, ak, az, ar)
# Iterate through each object in vars. By default, this returns a column for each list item.
# Convert to vector and then to data.frame...This is probably not that efficient.
as.data.frame(as.vector(sapply(vars, function(x) rep(x, times = c(3,3,3,6)))))
1 AlabamaCity
2 AlabamaCity
3 AlabamaCity
4 AlabamaCityST
....snip....
....snip....
57 ArkansasZipCode
58 ArkansasZipCode
59 ArkansasZipCode
60 ArkansasZipCode
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