“unpacking” a factor list from a data.frame

Question

I\'m new to R / having the option to easily re-organize data, and have hunted around for a solution but can\'t find exactly what I\'d like to do. Reshape2\'s melt/cast doesn

Answer 1

A plodding but seemingly robust solution:

## Some example data
df <- as.data.frame(cbind(ID = paste0("ID", 1:2), 
                          category_list = list(4:1, 2:3), 
                          xvar = 8:9, 
                          yvar = 10:9))

## Calculate number of times each row of df will be repeated 
nn <- sapply(df$category_list, length)  
ii <- rep(seq_along(nn), times=nn)       

## Reshape data.frame
transform(df[ii,], 
          category = unlist(df$category_list),
          category_list = NULL, 
          row.names = NULL)
#    ID xvar yvar category
# 1 ID1    8   10        4
# 2 ID1    8   10        3
# 3 ID1    8   10        2
# 4 ID1    8   10        1
# 5 ID2    9    9        2
# 6 ID2    9    9        3