How to reshape tabular data to one row per group

Question

I am an R (and coding novice) and I am looking for a way to reconfigure Table A show below into Table B.

Table A:

type   x1  x2  x3  
A      4   6            


        

Answer 1

Take a try and the solution is not such concise, just give you a hint.I think lots of things can be improved.

But finally we have to introduce NAs in here :(

zz <- "type   x1  x2  x3  
A      4   6   9  
A      7   4   1  
A      9   6   2   
B      1   3   8  
B      2   7   9"

dA <- read.table(text=zz, header=T)


tmp<-(sapply(unique(dA$type), FUN=function(x) as.vector(t(dA[dA$type == x, -1]))))

t(sapply(tmp, '[', seq(max(sapply(tmp, length)))))
      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6] [,7] [,8] [,9]
[1,]    4    6    9    7    4    1    9    6    2
[2,]    1    3    8    2    7    9   NA   NA   NA