Merge 2 dataframes if value within range

Question

I have been struggling with this for some time now and couldn\'t find any way of doing it, so I would be incredibly grateful if you could help! I am a novice in programming

Answer 1

With version v1.9.8 (on CRAN 25 Nov 2016), data.table has gained the ability to perform non-equi joins and range joins:

library(data.table)
setDT(fixes)[setDT(zones), 
             on = .(Sentence, StartPosition >= ZoneStart, StartPosition < ZoneEnd), 
             Zone := Zone][]

   Order Participant Sentence Fixation StartPosition Zone
1:     1           1        1        1         -6.89    2
2:     2           1        1        2         -5.88    3
3:     3           1        1        3         -5.33    3
4:     4           1        1        4         -4.09    4
5:     5           1        1        5         -5.36    3

Data

fixes <- readr::read_table(
  "Order Participant Sentence Fixation StartPosition
  1       1          1         1       -6.89
  2       1          1         2       -5.88
  3       1          1         3       -5.33
  4       1          1         4       -4.09
  5       1          1         5       -5.36"
)
zones <- readr::read_table(
  "Sentence     Zone  ZoneStart   ZoneEnd
  1           1     -8.86      -7.49
  1           2     -7.49      -5.89
  1           3     -5.88      -4.51
  1           4     -4.51      -2.90"
)