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rstringseparatortidy

How to split a column into multiple (non equal) columns in R

I'm working with a string that is a list of elements separated by commas. I want to separate the string so that each element has its column. But I'm having trouble because there are a different number of elements per list.

X1 <- "a,b,c"
X2 <- "a,b"
X3 <- "a,b,c,d"

DF <- data.frame(Col1= rbind(X1,X2,X3))

      Col1
X1   a,b,c
X2     a,b
X3 a,b,c,d

I would like it to look like this. Where each element has its own column, irrespective of how many elements there are in the character's string.

      Col1  Col2 Col3 Col4
X1     a    b     c
X2     a    b
X3     a    b     c    d

Thank You!

Solution

  • We could use cSplit from splitstackshape

    library(splitstackshape)
cSplit(DF, "Col1",",")

    -output

    cSplit(DF, "Col1",",")
   Col1_1 Col1_2 Col1_3 Col1_4
1:      a      b      c   <NA>
2:      a      b   <NA>   <NA>
3:      a      b      c      d