R dplyr join by range or virtual column

Question

I want to join two tibbles by a range or a virtual column. but it seems the by - parameter just allow to handle chr oder vector(chr) o

Answer 1

I really liked @WiWeber's range_join function, but it gives an error if a record is not within range. Here's a modification

library(dplyr)

d <- tibble(value = c(seq(1,4, by = 0.2),9))
r <- tibble(from = seq(1,5), to = c(seq(2,5),8), class = LETTERS[seq(1,5)])


range_join <- function(x, y, value, left, right){
all_matches <- tibble()
x = as.data.frame(x)
y = as.data.frame(y)
x$index=x[,value]
for (i in 1:nrow(y)){
    matches = x %>% filter(index>=y[i,left] & index<= y[i,right])
    if (nrow(matches)>0){
        all_matches = all_matches %>% bind_rows(matches %>% cbind(y[i,]))
    }
}
all_matches = all_matches %>% select(-index)
return(all_matches)
}


data <- d %>% 
range_join(r, "value", "from", "to")

data