Split columns in dataframe with NA

Question

I have a df like this:

df <- data.frame(FOO = c(\'A|B|C\', \'A|B\', \'B|C\', \'A\', \'C\'))

> df
    FOO
1 A|B|C
2   A|B
3   B|C
4     A
5            


        

Answer 1

Overlooked that OP asked for a base R solution. Please try @AndreElrico's, @r.user.05apr's or @milan's solutions.

---

This can be done with cSplit_e from the splitstackshape package:

library(splitstackshape)
cSplit_e(
  data = df,
  split.col = "FOO",
  sep = "|",
  mode = "value",
  type = "character",
  fill = " ",
  drop = TRUE
)
#  FOO_A FOO_B FOO_C
#1     A     B     C
#2     A     B      
#3           B     C
#4     A            
#5                 C

---

Does also work in case of the following df (see OP's comment above).

(df1 <- data.frame(FOO = c('A|B|C', 'A|B', 'B|C', 'A', 'C', 'B|D|F')))
#    FOO
#1 A|B|C
#2   A|B
#3   B|C
#4     A
#5     C
#6 B|D|F

cSplit_e(df1, "FOO", "|", "value",  "character", TRUE, fill = " ")
#  FOO_A FOO_B FOO_C FOO_D FOO_F
#1     A     B     C            
#2     A     B                  
#3           B     C            
#4     A                        
#5                 C            
#6           B           D     F