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A bit confused here over the extra = “merge” argument, why (and how) does it work? Merge is types as a character string, how come it behaves like a function?
And what do I do if I want a middle name to belong to the first_name column instead of the last?
Thanks in advance
I keep getting errors by not putting column names in quotes…why, in certain functions, like separate(), do the column names have to be put in quotes, and others, like select(), they do not? Is this something that has to be memorized, or is there a rule?
As you can see, the data frame (which can be piped as in the exercise), the column name, and the names of new columns (as a character vector) are to be passed to the separate function. We did this with
students %>%
separate(full_name, c('first_name', 'last_name'), ...)
There are other optional parameters for the separate function which you can see in the documentation (such as sep, remove, convert, extra, fill). If you don’t pass any arguments for these parameters, then their default values are used. The default for extra is ‘warn’, but when you write extra='merge', you choose to use this value instead of the default. extra isn’t a function, it is an optional parameter.
One way would be to do as Alexey has done in this StackOverFlow post.
He has basically used a regex (regular expression) pattern to use the last space before the end of line as the separator. In the exercise, we used " " as the separator. Alexey has used " (?=[^ ]+$)" as the separator. For the meanings of ?, [^ ], + and $, you can search the regex wikipedia article: Regular expression - Wikipedia for these symbols (or some other handy regex reference sheet).
You have to use the documentation. Whenever you want to do something new, first you have to do a search for any packages, commands or functions that can help you accomplish the task. Then, you have to read their documentation. There is no rule which will instantly tell you the interface of functions. If you use some function frequently, you will pretty much remember which arguments make sense. If you take a long break, things can fade from memory. So, a handy reference sheet of common functions or re-reading the documentation should bring you up to speed. Memorizing isn’t the goal. As long as you know where to look if you are unsure about something, you are fine.
you can see that the column name to be separated isn’t in quotes, but the new columns names are in quotes. Before using the separate function, you would have a look at the documentation to better understand what it does, what are its parameters, any examples, and any remarks or features which may be of note. If you look at the documentation for the separate function https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/tidyr/versions/0.8.3/topics/separate
you will see that the col parameter accepts column name or position, so we don’t need quotes when passing this argument. On the contrary, the documentation mentions that the into parameter accepts “Names of new variables to create as character vector”. Character is one of the data types in R, and a character vector would consist of a vector containing objects having character type. Character types have quotes around them. Reading the documentation is how we figure out the expected format of the arguments. One way to create character vectors is through the c() function as done in the exercise. You can read the documentation of this function as well c function - RDocumentation
I’m confused about the example versus the solution to the instructional part. In the example given during the lesson, the columns are split into two new columns. When outputting the new table, the table shows the original column with the two new columns next to it. In the exercise, after splitting the column into two new columns, the original column is removed. Which is the actual output of using the select() function? (Does it keep the original column or not?)
Yes, you are correct. The example is a bit inconsistent.
If we look at the documentation for the separate function, https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/tidyr/versions/0.8.3/topics/separate
we see that you can pass an optional argument remove which lets you specify whether you want to keep or remove the original column. The default value of remove is TRUE, so as we see in the instructional part, we didn’t pass the remove argument and the full_name column was removed in the new data frame and replaced with two new columns. if we had used the code
students <- students %>%
separate(full_name, c('first_name', 'last_name'), ' ', extra = 'merge', remove = FALSE)
then, the resulting dataframe would include all the three columns i.e. full_name, first_name, last_name
The example should have been coded like
# Create the 'user_type' and 'country' columns
df %>%
separate(type,c('user_type','country'),'_', remove = FALSE)
Since, the remove argument wasn’t used in the example, so you are correct that the result shouldn’t have the original type column.
I’m confused with the error that’s popping up. Didn’t I do that? The notebook shows that the full_name column has been split into first_name and last_name, too, so I really don’t understand.
students <- students %>%
separate(full_name,c('first_name', 'last_name'),'_', extra='merge')
the error message is:
Did you call separate() with students , full_name , c('first_name','last_name') , ' ' , and extra ='merge' as arguments and save the result to students ?
Confused because I’m sure I’ve done all of these things?
As the error message points out, you are supposed to separate the column on the ' ' character i.e. a blank space. You are separating on the underscore '_'. In the example, the column was separated on the underscore, but in the exercise you are dealing with different data.
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