Replace missing values with a value from another column

Question

If I have:

s <- data.frame(ID=c(191, 282, 202, 210), Group=c(\"\", \"A\", \"\", \"B\"), stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
s
   ID Group
1 191      
2 282     A
3 20         


        

Answer 1

ifelse(test, yes, no) is a handy function to do just that, and it can be used on vectors. Using your last data.frame:

s <- data.frame(ID = c(191, 282, 202, 210),
    Group = c("", "A", "", "B"),
    Group2 = c("D", "G", "G", "D"))

s$Group <- ifelse(test = s$Group != "", yes = s$Group, no = s$Group2)

The first argument is the test. For each value in the vector, if the test is true, then it will take the value in yes, otherwise it will take the value in no.