Split column at delimiter in data frame

Question

I would like to split one column into two within at data frame based on a delimiter  For example   a b b c   to become  a    b b    c   within a data frame   Thanks

User · Answer

The newly popular tidyr package does this with separate  It uses regular expressions so you ll have to escape the    df  lt - data frame ID 11 13  FOO c  a b    b c    x y    separate data   df  col   FOO  into   c  left    right    sep             ID left right 1 11    a     b 2 12    b     c 3 13    x     y   though in this case the defaults are smart enough to work  it looks for non-alphanumeric characters to split on    separate data   df  col   FOO  into   c  left    right

User · Answer

Taesung Shin is right  but then just some more magic to make it into a data frame  I added a  x y  line to avoid ambiguities   df  lt - data frame ID 11 13  FOO c  a b   b c   x y    foo  lt - data frame do call  rbind   strsplit as character df FOO      fixed TRUE      Or  if you want to replace the columns in the existing data frame   within df  FOO lt -data frame do call  rbind   strsplit as character FOO        fixed TRUE       Which produces     ID FOO X1 FOO X2 1 11      a      b 2 12      b      c 3 13      x      y

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Combining  Ramnath and  Tommy s answers allowed me to find an approach that works in base R for one or more columns   Basic usage    gt  df   data frame      id 1 3  foo c  a b   b c   c d         bar c  p q    r s    s t    stringsAsFactors F   gt  transform df  test do call rbind  strsplit foo       fixed TRUE    stringsAsFactors F    id foo bar test 1 test 2 1  1 a b p q      a      b 2  2 b c r s      b      c 3  3 c d s t      c      d   Multiple columns    gt  transform df  lapply list foo bar     function x do call rbind  strsplit x       fixed TRUE     stringsAsFactors F    id foo bar X1 X2 X1 1 X2 1 1  1 a b p q  a  b    p    q 2  2 b c r s  b  c    r    s 3  3 c d s t  c  d    s    t   Better naming of multiple split columns    gt  transform df  lapply  l lt -list foo bar  names l  c  foo   bar   l                               function x do call rbind  strsplit x       fixed TRUE     stringsAsFactors F    id foo bar foo 1 foo 2 bar 1 bar 2 1  1 a b p q     a     b     p     q 2  2 b c r s     b     c     r     s 3  3 c d s t     c     d     s     t

User · Answer

Hadley has a very elegant solution to do this inside data frames in his reshape package  using the function colsplit   require reshape   gt  df  lt - data frame ID 11 13  FOO c  a b   b c   x y     gt  df   ID FOO 1 11 a b 2 12 b c 3 13 x y  gt  df   transform df  FOO   colsplit FOO  split          names   c  a    b      gt  df   ID FOO a FOO b 1 11     a     b 2 12     b     c 3 13     x     y

User · Answer

Just came across this question as it was linked in a recent question on SO   Shameless plug of an answer  Use cSplit from my  splitstackshape  package   df  lt - data frame ID 11 13  FOO c  a b   b c   x y    library splitstackshape  cSplit df   FOO            ID FOO 1 FOO 2   1 11     a     b   2 12     b     c   3 13     x     y   This particular function also handles splitting multiple columns  even if each column has a different delimiter   df  lt - data frame ID 11 13                    FOO c  a b   b c   x y                      BAR   c  A B    B C    C D    cSplit df  c  FOO    BAR    c                ID FOO 1 FOO 2 BAR 1 BAR 2   1 11     a     b     A     B   2 12     b     c     B     C   3 13     x     y     C     D     Essentially  it s a fancy convenience wrapper for using read table text   some character vector  sep   some sep  and binding that output to the original data frame  In other words  another A base R approach could be   df  lt - data frame ID 11 13  FOO c  a b   b c   x y    cbind df  read table text   as character df FOO   sep           ID FOO V1 V2 1 11 a b  a  b 2 12 b c  b  c 3 13 x y  x  y

User · Answer

strsplit c  a b   b c       fixed TRUE

[r] Split column at delimiter in data frame

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