What is the best way to transpose a data.frame in R and to set one of the columns to be the header for the new transposed table?

r dataframe transpose
themartinmcfly picture themartinmcfly · Jul 11, 2011 · Viewed 56.8k times · Source

What is the best way to transpose a data.frame in R and to set one of the columns to be the header for the new transposed table? I have coded up a way to do this below. As I am still new to R. I would like suggestions to improve my code as well as alternatives that would be more R-like. My solution is also unfortunately a bit hard coded (i.e. the new column headings are in a certain location).

# Assume a data.frame called fooData
# Assume the column is the first column before transposing

# Transpose table
fooData.T <- t(fooData)

# Set the column headings
colnames(fooData.T) <- test[1,]

# Get rid of the column heading row
fooData.T <- fooData.T[2:nrow(fooData.T), ]

#fooData.T now contains a transposed table with the first column as headings

Answer

nzcoops picture nzcoops · Jul 11, 2011

Well you could do it in 2 steps by using

# Transpose table YOU WANT
fooData.T <- t(fooData[,2:ncol(fooData)])

# Set the column headings from the first column in the original table
colnames(fooData.T) <- fooData[,1]

The result being a matrix which you're probably aware of, that's due to class issues when transposing. I don't think there will be a single line way to do this given the lack of naming abilities in the transpose step.

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