Match values in data frame with values in another data frame and replace former with a corresponding pattern from the other data frame

user_969113 0
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Complicated title but here is a simple example of what I am trying to achieve:

d <- data.frame(v1 = c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8), 
                v2 = c("A","E","C","B","B","C","A","E"))

m <- data.frame(v3 = c("D","E","A","C","D","B"), 
                v4 = c("d","e","a","c","d","b"))

Values in d$v2 should be replaced by values in m$v4 by matching the values from d$v2 in m$v3

The resulting data frame d should look like:

v1    v4
1      a
2      e
3      c
4      b
5      b
6      c
7      a
8      e

I tried different stuff and the closest I came was: d$v2 <- m$v4[which(m$v3 %in% d$v2)]

I try to avoid any for-loops again! Must be possible :-) somehow... ;)

dataframe r pattern-matching replace
3 Answers

This will give you the desired output:

d$v2 <- m$v4[match(d$v2, m$v3)]

match function returns the position from m matrix's v3 column for the values in d$v2 being matched. Once you have obtained the indices (from using match()), access elements from m$v4 using those indices to replace the elements in d matrix, column v2.

user_111217470
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