Hello,

Try the following.


A <- read.table(text="
TYPE   DATE
A            2
A            5
A            20
B            10
B            2
", header = TRUE)


B <- read.table(text="
TYPE  Special_Date
A              2
A              6
A              20
A              22
B              5
B              6
", header = TRUE)

result <- do.call( rbind, lapply(split(merge(A, B), list(m$DATE, m$TYPE)), function(x){
        a <- abs(x$DATE - x$Special_Date)
        if(nrow(x)) x[which(min(a) == a), ] }) )
result$Difference <- result$DATE - result$Special_Date
result$Special_Date <- NULL
rownames(result) <- seq_len(nrow(result))
result


Also, it's a good practice to post data examples using dput(). For instance,

dput(A)
structure(list(TYPE = structure(c(1L, 1L, 1L, 2L, 2L), .Label = c("A",
"B"), class = "factor"), DATE = c(2L, 5L, 20L, 10L, 2L)), .Names = c("TYPE",
"DATE"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -5L))

Now all we have to do is run the statement A <- structure(... etc...) to have an exact copy of the data example.
Anyway, your example with input and the wanted result was very welcome.

Hope this helps,

Rui Barradas

Em 19-08-2012 11:10, Francesco escreveu:
Dear R-help

Î would like to know if there is a short solution in R for this
merging problem...

Let say I have a dataset A as:

TYPE   DATE
A            2
A            5
A            20
B            10
B            2

(there can be duplicates for the same type and date)

and I have another dataset B as :

TYPE  Special_Date
A              2
A              6
A              20
A              22
B              5
B              6

The question is : I would like to obtain the difference between the
date of each observation in A and the closest special date in B with
the same type. In case of ties I would take the latest date of the
two.

For example I would obtain here

TYPE   DATE   Difference
A            2            0=2-2
A            5            -1=5-6
A            20            0=20-20
B            10           +4=10-6
B            2             -3=2-5

Do you know how to (simply?) obtain this in R?

Many thanks!
Best Regards

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