How do I get a contingency table?

Question

I am trying to create a contingency table from a particular type of data. This would be doable with loops etc... but because my final table would contain more than 10E5 cell

Answer 1

the reshape package should do the trick.

> library(reshape)

> df <- data.frame(PLANT = c("Tragopogon_pratensis","Anthriscus_sylvestris","Anthriscus_sylvestris","Heracleum_sphondylium","Anthriscus_sylvestris","Anthriscus_sylvestris","Cerastium_holosteoides"),
                   ANIMAL= c("Propylea_quatuordecimpunctata","Rhagonycha_nigriventris","Sarcophaga_carnaria","Sarcophaga_carnaria","Sarcophaga_variegata","Sphaerophoria_interrupta_Gruppe","Sphaerophoria_interrupta_Gruppe"),
                   INTERACTIONS = c(1,3,2,1,4,3,1),
                   stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

> df <- melt(df,id.vars=c("PLANT","ANIMAL"))    
> df <- cast(df,formula=PLANT~ANIMAL)
> df <- replace(df,is.na(df),0)

> df
                   PLANT Propylea_quatuordecimpunctata Rhagonycha_nigriventris
1  Anthriscus_sylvestris                             0                       3
2 Cerastium_holosteoides                             0                       0
3  Heracleum_sphondylium                             0                       0
4   Tragopogon_pratensis                             1                       0
  Sarcophaga_carnaria Sarcophaga_variegata Sphaerophoria_interrupta_Gruppe
1                   2                    4                               3
2                   0                    0                               1
3                   1                    0                               0
4                   0                    0                               0

I'm still figuring out how to fix the order issue, any suggestion?