R: Updating a data frame with another data frame

Question

Let\'s say our initial data frame looks like this:

df1 = data.frame(Index=c(1:6),A=c(1:6),B=c(1,2,3,NA,NA,NA),C=c(1,2,3,NA,NA,NA))

> df1
  Index A  B  C
         


        

Answer 1

merge then aggregate:

aggregate(. ~ Index, data=merge(df1, df2, all=TRUE), na.omit, na.action=na.pass )

#  Index B C A
#1     1 1 1 1
#2     2 2 2 2
#3     3 3 3 3
#4     4 4 5 4
#5     5 4 5 5
#6     6 4 5 6

Or in dplyr speak:

df1 %>% 
    full_join(df2) %>%
    group_by(Index) %>%
    summarise_each(funs(na.omit))

#Joining by: c("Index", "B", "C")
#Source: local data frame [6 x 4]
#
#  Index     A     B     C
#  (dbl) (int) (dbl) (dbl)
#1     1     1     1     1
#2     2     2     2     2
#3     3     3     3     3
#4     4     4     4     5
#5     5     5     4     5
#6     6     6     4     5