How to create a new variable in a data.frame based on a condition?

Question

Assume we have a dataframe

x   y
1   1
2   4 
4   5 

how can you add a new variable to the dataframe such that if x is less than or equal

Answer 1

If you have a very limited number of levels, you could try converting y into factor and change its levels.

> xy <- data.frame(x = c(1, 2, 4), y = c(1, 4, 5))
> xy$w <- as.factor(xy$y)
> levels(xy$w) <- c("good", "fair", "bad")
> xy
  x y    w
1 1 1 good
2 2 4 fair
3 4 5  bad

Answer 2

One obvious and straightforward possibility is to use "if-else conditions". In that example

x <- c(1, 2, 4)
y <- c(1, 4, 5)
w <- ifelse(x <= 1, "good", ifelse((x >= 3) & (x <= 5), "bad", "fair"))
data.frame(x, y, w)

** For the additional question in the edit** Is that what you expect ?

> d1 <- c("e", "c", "a")
> d2 <- c("e", "a", "b")
> 
> w <- ifelse((d1 == "e") & (d2 == "e"), 1, 
+    ifelse((d1=="a") & (d2 == "b"), 2,
+    ifelse((d1 == "e"), 3, 99)))
>     
> data.frame(d1, d2, w)
  d1 d2  w
1  e  e  1
2  c  a 99
3  a  b  2

If you do not feel comfortable with the ifelse function, you can also work with the if and else statements for such applications.