Gathering wide columns into multiple long columns using pivot_longer

Question

I have code which converts from wide to long with gather but I have to do this column by column. I want to use pivot_longer to gather wide multiple columns with into multip

Answer 1

I have found the answer to my question:

pivot_longer - transforms the columns in wide format starting with 'hf' and 'ac' to long format in separate columns

names_to parameters:

.value = contains metadata on the cell values that correspond to the original columns

these values are pivoted in long format and added in a new columns "hf" and "ac"

column "group" has the original column endings (e.g. the numbers 1-6) pivoted to long format

names_pattern = regex argument specifying character "_" where column names are to be broken up

df3 <- df %>% 
  tidyr::pivot_longer(cols = c(starts_with("hf"), starts_with("ac"), starts_with("cs"), starts_with("se")),
                      names_to = c(".value", "level"), 
                      names_pattern = "(.*)_(.*)"

  )