Jeff's advice is sound, but as I have a bit of time on my hand, I'll take a guess at it. If it's wrong, then follow Jeff's advice so that we don't have to continue to guess -- and do as he describes in any future posts, of course. Note also that the mail server strips off attachments (except for a few special types -- see the mailing list instructions for which), so you need to follow the posting guide to post example data (see ?dput) .
It sounds to me as if your data are in a data frame, d, that looks like this: Sample_ID IN d13c ppm_CO2 ppm_13CO2 ....... 1 v1 x1 y1 z1 1 v2 x2 y2 z2 . ........... .................................. . ................................................... 1 2 vm xm ym zm . . 2 etc. 3 . . If so, then something like nm <- c("d13c", "ppm_CO2", "ppm_13CO2") by(d, d$Sample_ID, function(x){ x[, nm] - x[1, "IN"] }, simplify = FALSE ) would do what you seem to request. See ?by and associated links for details. Again, if this is not what you want, do not ask me for further help. I'm done guessing. Cheers, Bert Bert Gunter "The trouble with having an open mind is that people keep coming along and sticking things into it." -- Opus (aka Berkeley Breathed in his "Bloom County" comic strip ) On Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 8:14 AM Romy Rehschuh via R-help < r-help@r-project.org> wrote: > Dear all, > > I hope this is the right way to ask questions. > I have a problem with R regarding the detection of the measurement of a > specific sample_id (see example file attached). I have to substract the > "IN" values (means the air which goes into the chambers) from the values of > "d13C", "ppm_CO2" and "ppm_13CO2" for every single chamber (=sample ID). > The "IN" values have to be the ones which were measured* before *the > measurements of the single chambers in time. I measured "IN" once and then > up to 10 chambers in a row to safe time, then "IN" again, but it can > change. > Therefore, searching for the closest "IN" does not work. > > Do you have any suggestions? Would it be possible to write a loop for this? > I would really much appreciate your help! > > Best, Vicci > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > 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. > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.