Replace a value NA with the value from another column in R

Question

I want to replace the NA value in dfABy from the column A, with the value from the column B, based on the year of column year. For example, my df is:

Answer 1

You could use simple replacement with [<-, subsetting for the NA elements.

df$A[is.na(df$A)] <- df$B[is.na(df$A)]

Or alternatively, within()

within(df, A[is.na(A)] <- B[is.na(A)])

Both give

   A  B Year
1 56 75 1921
2 45 45 1921
3 77 77 1922
4 67 41 1923
5 65 65 1923

Data:

df <- structure(list(A = c(56L, NA, NA, 67L, NA), B = c(75L, 45L, 77L, 
41L, 65L), Year = c(1921L, 1921L, 1922L, 1923L, 1923L)), .Names = c("A", 
"B", "Year"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -5L))