How to rbind only the common columns of two data sets

Question

I have 2 data frames with different number of columns each. Some of the columns are common between the 2 data frames. How can i rbind only the common columns of the two data

Answer 1

made my own function for my personal package: (this works also for more than 2 dataframes)

function:

fast.rbind <- function(...,method=c("fill","common"),value=NA){
    if("fill"==method[1]) {
        fun1 <- function(x,y,value=NA){
            x[setdiff(colnames(y),colnames(x))] <- value

            y[setdiff(colnames(x),colnames(y))] <- value

            return(rbind(x,y))
        }
    }

    if("common"==method[1]) {
        fun1 <- function(x,y,value=NULL){
            common_cols <- intersect(colnames(x), colnames(y))
            return(rbind(x[, common_cols,drop=F],y[, common_cols,drop=F]))
        }
    }
    return(Reduce(function(x,y){fun1(x=x,y=y,value=value)},list(...)))
}

call + example data:

df1 <- mtcars[1:5,1:4]
df2 <- mtcars[6:10,2:5]
df3 <- mtcars[11:15,4:7]
fast.rbind(df1,df2,df3,method="common")
fast.rbind(df1,df2,df3,value="yourDesiredFill")