HI, Not sure whether it helps or not.
You could use ?merge() dat1<-as.data.frame(as.table(tapply(x$value, list(x$group, x$year), FUN=length)),stringsAsFactors=FALSE) dat2<-expand.grid(group=LETTERS[1:2],year=2001:2005) names(dat1)[1:2]<- names(dat2) res<-merge(dat1,dat2,by=c("group","year"),all=TRUE) res[is.na(res)]<-0 A.K. ----- Original Message ----- From: Marius Hofert <marius.hof...@math.ethz.ch> To: R-help <r-help@r-project.org> Cc: Sent: Monday, March 11, 2013 8:59 AM Subject: [R] How to 'extend' a data.frame based on given variable combinations ? Dear expeRts, I have a data.frame with certain covariate combinations ('group' and 'year') and corresponding values: set.seed(1) x <- data.frame(group = c(rep("A", 4), rep("B", 3)), year = c(2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2003, 2004, 2005), value = rexp(7)) My goal is essentially to construct a data.frame which contains all (group, year) combinations with corresponding number of values. This can easily be done with tapply(): as.data.frame(as.table(tapply(x$value, list(x$group, x$year), FUN=length))) # => 2002 missing However, the tricky part is now that I would like to have *all* years in between 2001 and 2005. Although tapply() sees the missing year 2001 for group "B" (since group "A" has a value there), tapply() does not 'see' the missing year 2002. How can such a data.frame be constructed [ideally without using additional R packages]? Here is a straightforward way (hopelessly inefficient for the application in mind): num <- cbind(expand.grid(group = LETTERS[1:2], year=2001:2005), num=0) covar <- c("group", "year") for(i in seq_len(nrow(num))) num[i,"num"] <- sum(apply(x[,covar], 1, function(z) all(z == num[i,covar]))) num Cheers, Marius ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.