How to append rows to an R data frame

Question

I have looked around StackOverflow, but I cannot find a solution specific to my problem, which involves appending rows to an R data frame.

I am initializing an empty

Answer 1

Let's benchmark the three solutions proposed:

# use rbind
f1 <- function(n){
  df <- data.frame(x = numeric(), y = character())
  for(i in 1:n){
    df <- rbind(df, data.frame(x = i, y = toString(i)))
  }
  df
}
# use list
f2 <- function(n){
  df <- data.frame(x = numeric(), y = character(), stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
  for(i in 1:n){
    df[i,] <- list(i, toString(i))
  }
  df
}
# pre-allocate space
f3 <- function(n){
  df <- data.frame(x = numeric(1000), y = character(1000), stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
  for(i in 1:n){
    df$x[i] <- i
    df$y[i] <- toString(i)
  }
  df
}
system.time(f1(1000))
#   user  system elapsed 
#   1.33    0.00    1.32 
system.time(f2(1000))
#   user  system elapsed 
#   0.19    0.00    0.19 
system.time(f3(1000))
#   user  system elapsed 
#   0.14    0.00    0.14

The best solution is to pre-allocate space (as intended in R). The next-best solution is to use list, and the worst solution (at least based on these timing results) appears to be rbind.