Reframing magic on data.frame [duplicate]

Answer 1

Use dcast from the reshape2 library:

library(reshape2)

> df <- data.frame(Shop.Name=rep(c("Shop1","Shop2","Shop3"),each=3),
+                  Items=rpois(9,5),
+                  Product=c(rep(c("Prod1","Prod2","Prod3","Prod4"),2),"Prod5")
+ )
> df
  Shop.Name Items Product
1     Shop1     6   Prod1
2     Shop1     5   Prod2
3     Shop1     6   Prod3
4     Shop2     5   Prod4
5     Shop2     6   Prod1
6     Shop2     6   Prod2
7     Shop3     4   Prod3
8     Shop3     7   Prod4
9     Shop3     5   Prod5
> dcast(df,Shop.Name ~ Product,value.var="Items",fill=0)
  Shop.Name Prod1 Prod2 Prod3 Prod4 Prod5
1     Shop1     6     5     6     0     0
2     Shop2     6     6     0     5     0
3     Shop3     0     0     4     7     5