cbind a dataframe with an empty dataframe - cbind.fill?

Question

I think I\'m looking for an analog of rbind.fill (in Hadley\'s plyr package) for cbind. I looked, but there is no cbind.fill

Answer 1

Here's a cbind fill:

cbind.fill <- function(...){
    nm <- list(...) 
    nm <- lapply(nm, as.matrix)
    n <- max(sapply(nm, nrow)) 
    do.call(cbind, lapply(nm, function (x) 
        rbind(x, matrix(, n-nrow(x), ncol(x))))) 
}

Let's try it:

x<-matrix(1:10,5,2)
y<-matrix(1:16, 4,4)
z<-matrix(1:12, 2,6)

cbind.fill(x,y)
cbind.fill(x,y,z)
cbind.fill(mtcars, mtcars[1:10,])

I think I stole this from somewhere.

EDIT STOLE FROM HERE: LINK

Answer 2

We could add id column then use merge:

df1 <- mtcars[1:5, 1:2]
#                    mpg cyl id
# Mazda RX4         21.0   6  1
# Mazda RX4 Wag     21.0   6  2
# Datsun 710        22.8   4  3
# Hornet 4 Drive    21.4   6  4
# Hornet Sportabout 18.7   8  5

df2 <- mtcars[6:7, 3:4]
#            disp  hp
# Valiant     225 105
# Duster 360  360 245

#Add id column then merge
df1$id <- seq(nrow(df1)) 
df2$id <- seq(nrow(df2)) 

merge(df1, df2, by = "id", all.x = TRUE, check.names = FALSE)
#   id  mpg cyl disp  hp
# 1  1 21.0   6  225 105
# 2  2 21.0   6  360 245
# 3  3 22.8   4   NA  NA
# 4  4 21.4   6   NA  NA
# 5  5 18.7   8   NA  NA

Answer 3

I suggest a modification of Tyler's answer. My function allows cbind-ing of data.frames and/or matrices with vectors without loosing column names as it happens in Tyler's solution

cbind.fill <- function(...){
  nm <- list(...) 
  dfdetect <- grepl("data.frame|matrix", unlist(lapply(nm, function(cl) paste(class(cl), collapse = " ") )))
  # first cbind vectors together 
  vec <- data.frame(nm[!dfdetect])
  n <- max(sapply(nm[dfdetect], nrow)) 
  vec <- data.frame(lapply(vec, function(x) rep(x, n)))
  if (nrow(vec) > 0) nm <- c(nm[dfdetect], list(vec))
  nm <- lapply(nm, as.data.frame)

  do.call(cbind, lapply(nm, function (df1) 
    rbind(df1, as.data.frame(matrix(NA, ncol = ncol(df1), nrow = n-nrow(df1), dimnames = list(NULL, names(df1))))) )) 
}

cbind.fill(data.frame(idx = numeric()), matrix(0, ncol = 2), 
           data.frame(qwe = 1:3, rty = letters[1:3]), type = "GOOD", mark = "K-5")
#       idx V1 V2 qwe rty type mark
#     1  NA  0  0   1   a GOOD  K-5
#     2  NA NA NA   2   b GOOD  K-5
#     3  NA NA NA   3   c GOOD  K-5