Using tidyr
package, this can be easily handled in 1 function call.
data <- data.frame('a' = 1:3,
'b' = c('a','b','c'),
'c' = c('d', 'e', 'f'),
'd' = c('g', 'h', 'i'))
tidyr::unite_(data, paste(colnames(data)[-1], collapse="_"), colnames(data)[-1])
a b_c_d
1 1 a_d_g
2 2 b_e_h
3 3 c_f_i
Edit: Exclude first column, everything else gets pasted.
# tidyr_0.6.3
unite(data, newCol, -a)
# or by column index unite(data, newCol, -1)
# a newCol
# 1 1 a_d_g
# 2 2 b_e_h
# 3 3 c_f_i