Try looping over columns, as in fDF <- function (x, column) { stopifnot(length(dim(x))==2, all(column > 0), all(column <= ncol(x)), length(column) == nrow(x)) u <- unique(column) tmp <- split(seq_along(column), factor(column, levels = u)) for (i in seq_along(tmp)) { x[ tmp[[i]], u[i] ] <- 1 } x }
> fDF(mydf, myindex) c1 c2 c3 1 1 NA NA 2 NA 1 NA 3 NA NA 1 4 NA 1 NA 5 1 NA NA If you use a matrix instead of a data.frame then the following works and is probably much quicker. fMat <- function (x, column) { stopifnot(is.matrix(x), all(column > 0), all(column <= ncol(x)), length(column) == nrow(x)) x[cbind(seq_len(nrow(x)), column)] <- 1 x } Your problem may be better represented with sparse matrices (see the Matrix package). Bill Dunlap Spotfire, TIBCO Software wdunlap tibco.com > -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On > Behalf > Of Dimitri Liakhovitski > Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 5:11 PM > To: r-help > Subject: [R] Modifying a data frame based on a vector that contains column > numbers > > Hello! > > # I have a data frame: > mydf<-data.frame(c1=rep(NA,5),c2=rep(NA,5),c3=rep(NA,5)) > > # I have an index whose length is always the same as nrow(mydf): > myindex<-c(1,2,3,2,1) > > # I need c1 to have 1s in rows 1 and 5 (based on the information in myindex) > # I need c2 to have 1s in rows 2 and 4 (also based on myindex) > # I need c3 to have 1 in row 3 > # In other words, I am trying to achieve this result: > mygoal<-data.frame(c1=c(1,NA,NA,NA,1),c2=c(NA,1,NA,1,NA),c3=c(NA,NA,1,NA,NA)) > > I know how to do it with a loop that runs through rows of mydf. > However, in real life I have a huge data frame with tons of rows, dozens of > columns (instead of 3 in this example) - I am afraid it'll take forever. > Any hint on how to do it faster, maybe using subindexing somehow? > > Thank you very much! > > -- > Dimitri Liakhovitski > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > 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.