Merge dataframes on matching A, B and *closest* C?

Question

I have two dataframes like so:

set.seed(1)
df <- cbind(expand.grid(x=1:3, y=1:5), time=round(runif(15)*30))
to.merge <- data.frame(x=c(2, 2, 2, 3, 2),
         


        

Answer 1

Using merge couple of times and aggregate once, here is how to do it.

set.seed(1)
df <- cbind(expand.grid(x = 1:3, y = 1:5), time = round(runif(15) * 30))
to.merge <- data.frame(x = c(2, 2, 2, 3, 2), y = c(1, 1, 1, 5, 4), time = c(17, 12, 11.6, 22.5, 2), val = letters[1:5], stringsAsFactors = F)

#Find rows that match by x and y
res <- merge(to.merge, df, by = c("x", "y"), all.x = TRUE)
res$dif <- abs(res$time.x - res$time.y)
res
##   x y time.x val time.y dif
## 1 2 1   17.0   a     11 6.0
## 2 2 1   12.0   b     11 1.0
## 3 2 1   11.6   c     11 0.6
## 4 2 4    2.0   e      6 4.0
## 5 3 5   22.5   d     23 0.5

#Find rows that need to be merged
res1 <- merge(aggregate(dif ~ x + y, data = res, FUN = min), res)
res1
##   x y dif time.x val time.y
## 1 2 1 0.6   11.6   c     11
## 2 2 4 4.0    2.0   e      6
## 3 3 5 0.5   22.5   d     23

#Finally merge the result back into df
final <- merge(df, res1[res1$dif <= 1, c("x", "y", "val")], all.x = TRUE)
final
##    x y time  val
## 1  1 1    8 
## 2  1 2   27 
## 3  1 3   28 
## 4  1 4    2 
## 5  1 5   21 
## 6  2 1   11    c
## 7  2 2    6 
## 8  2 3   20 
## 9  2 4    6 
## 10 2 5   12 
## 11 3 1   17 
## 12 3 2   27 
## 13 3 3   19 
## 14 3 4    5 
## 15 3 5   23    d