> On Feb 1, 2008 7:28 AM, Daniel Brewer <daniel.brewer at="" icr.ac.uk=""> wrote: >> I would like to join two dataframes that have the majority of columns in >> common but some different. Let me give you an example: >> >> Dataframe 1 >> >> ID COL1 COL2 COL3 >> 1 a a a >> 2 b b b >> 3 c c c >> >> Dataframe 2 >> >> ID COL1 COL2 COL4 >> 4 a a d >> 5 b b d >> >> And the joined dataframe I would like is: >> >> ID COL1 COL2 COL3 COL4 >> 1 a a a NA >> 2 b b b NA >> 3 c c c NA >> 4 a a NA d >> 5 b b NA d >> >> Any ideas? > > One solution is in the CRAN package reshape: > > df1 <- data.frame(matrix(letters[1:16],nc=4)) > df2 <- data.frame(matrix(letters[1:16],nc=4)) > colnames(df1) <- 1:4 > colnames(df2) <- 2:5 > rbind.fill(df1,df2) > > 1 2 3 4 5 > 1 a e i m <na> > 2 b f j n <na> > 3 c g k o <na> > 4 d h l p <na> > 5 <na> a e i m > 6 <na> b f j n > 7 <na> c g k o > 8 <na> d h l p > > There are certainly other answers, but I find the reshape package to > be a useful one anyway. An alternative is: merge(df1, df2, all=TRUE)