R: Converting multiple binary columns into one factor variable whose factors are binary column names

Question

I am a new R user. Currently I am working on a dataset wherein I have to transform the multiple binary columns into single factor column

Here is the example:

Answer 1

Melt is certainly a solution. I'd suggest using the reshape2 melt as follows:

library(reshape2)

df=data.frame(Property.RealEstate=c(0,0,1,0,0,0),
              Property.Insurance=c(0,1,0,1,0,0),
              Property.CarOther=c(0,0,0,0,1,0),
              Property.Unknown=c(0,0,0,0,0,1))

#add id column (presumably you have ids more meaningful than row numbers)
df$row=1:nrow(df)

#melt to "long" format
long=melt(df,id="row")

#only keep 1's
long=long[which(long$value==1),]

#merge in ids for NA entries
long=merge(df[,"row",drop=F],long,all.x=T)

#clean up to match example output
long=long[order(long$row),"variable",drop=F]
names(long)="Property"
long$Property=gsub("Property.","",long$Property,fixed=T)

#results
long