Hi, The format is bit messed up. So, not sure this is what you wanted.
x1<- read.table(text="State_prov,Shape_name,bob2009,bob2010,bob2011 Nova Scotia,Annapolis,0,0,1 Nova Scotia,Antigonish,0,0,0 Nova Scotia,Gly,NA,NA,NA ",sep=",",header=TRUE,stringsAsFactors=FALSE) x2<- read.table(text=" FID,State_prov,Shape_name,bob2009,bob2010,coy2009 0,Nova Scotia,Annapolis,0,0,10 1,Nova Scotia,Antigonish,0,0,1 2,Nova Scotia,Gly,0,0,1 ",sep=",",header=TRUE,stringsAsFactors=FALSE) merge(x1,x2,all=TRUE) # State_prov Shape_name bob2009 bob2010 bob2011 FID coy2009 #1 Nova Scotia Annapolis 0 0 1 0 10 #2 Nova Scotia Antigonish 0 0 0 1 1 #3 Nova Scotia Gly 0 0 NA 2 1 #4 Nova Scotia Gly NA NA NA NA NA ----- Original Message ----- From: Catarina Ferreira <catferre...@gmail.com> To: r-help@r-project.org Cc: Sent: Friday, April 26, 2013 1:10 PM Subject: [R] Help with merge function Dear all, I'm trying to merge 2 dataframes, but I'm not being entirely successful and I can't understand why. Dataframe x1 State_prov Shape_name bob2009 bob 2010 bob2011 Nova Scotia Annapolis 0 0 1 Nova Scotia Antigonish 0 0 0 Nova Scotia Gly NA NA NA Dataframe x2 - has 20000 rows and 193 variables, contains one important field which is "FID" that is a link to a shapefile (this is not in x1) and shares common columns with x1, like this: FID State_prov Shape_name bob2009 bob 2010 coy 2009 0 Nova Scotia Annapolis 0 0 10 1 Nova Scotia Antigonish 0 0 1 2 Nova Scotia Gly 0 0 1 So when I do x3 <- merge(x1, x2, by=intersect(names(x1), names(x2)), all=TRUE) it should do the trick. The thing is that it works for the columns (it adds all the new columns not common to both dataframes), but it also adds the rows. This is what I get (x3): FID State_prov Shape_name bob2009 bob 2010 coy 2009 bob2011 0 Nova Scotia Annapolis 0 0 10 NA NA Nova Scotia Annapolis NA NA NA 1 1 Nova Scotia Antigonish 0 0 1 NA NA Nova Scotia Antigonish NA NA NA 0 2 Nova Scotia Gly 0 0 1 NA NA Nova Scotia Gly NA NA NA NA What I want to get is a true merge, like this: FID State_prov Shape_name bob2009 bob 2010 coy 2009 bob2011 0 Nova Scotia Annapolis 0 0 10 1 1 Nova Scotia Antigonish 0 0 1 0 2 Nova Scotia Gly 0 0 1 NA Can anybody please help me to understand what I'm doing wrong. Any help will be much appreciated!! -- Catarina C. Ferreira, PhD [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.