HI, Try this: mydf1<- mydf mydf1[]<-lapply(1:3,function(i) {mydf[which(i== myindex),i]<-1; mydf[,i]}) mydf1 # c1 c2 c3 #1 1 NA NA #2 NA 1 NA #3 NA NA 1 #4 NA 1 NA #5 1 NA NA
identical(mydf1,mygoal) #[1] TRUE A.K. ----- Original Message ----- From: Dimitri Liakhovitski <dimitri.liakhovit...@gmail.com> To: r-help <r-help@r-project.org> Cc: Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 8:10 PM 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.