Split a column by group [duplicate]

Question

I have some data that looks a little bit like this:

test.frame <- read.table(text = "name   amounts   
                                JEAN  318.5,45
                             GREGORY 1518.5,67,8
                              WALTER  518.5
                               LARRY  518.5,55,1
                               HARRY  318.5,32
                         ",header = TRUE,sep = "")

I'd like it to look more like this ...

name   amount
JEAN  318.5
JEAN 45
GREGORY 1518.5
GREGORY 67
GREGORY 8
WALTER  518.5
LARRY  518.5
LARRY  55
LARRY  1
HARRY  318.5
HARRY  32

It seems like there should be a straightforward way to break out the "amounts" column, but I'm not coming up with it. Happy to take a "RTFM page for this particular command" answer. What's the command I'm looking for?

Answer 1

(test.frame <- read.table(text = "name   amounts   
                                JEAN  318.5,45
                             GREGORY 1518.5,67,8
                              WALTER  518.5
                               LARRY  518.5,55,1
                               HARRY  318.5,32
                         ",header = TRUE,sep = ""))


#      name     amounts
# 1    JEAN    318.5,45
# 2 GREGORY 1518.5,67,8
# 3  WALTER       518.5
# 4   LARRY  518.5,55,1
# 5   HARRY    318.5,32

tmp <- setNames(strsplit(as.character(test.frame$amounts), 
                split = ','), test.frame$name)

data.frame(name = rep(names(tmp), sapply(tmp, length)), 
           amounts = unlist(tmp), row.names = NULL)

#       name amounts
# 1     JEAN   318.5
# 2     JEAN      45
# 3  GREGORY  1518.5
# 4  GREGORY      67
# 5  GREGORY       8
# 6   WALTER   518.5
# 7    LARRY   518.5
# 8    LARRY      55
# 9    LARRY       1
# 10   HARRY   318.5
# 11   HARRY      32