Outer join 2 data frames by multiple columns in R

Question

Could anyone help to explain me this issue. I have 2 dataframes: mail_sent:1901 rows and client_return_race: 1663 rows. I want to merge these dataframes together and all rows in mail_sent should be show.

These 2 dataframes have 3 same column: CLIENT_ID, CAMPAIGN_NAME, TIME. I want to merge 2 dataframes based on 3 same columns above. The below is my code.

The code runs well however, the result of merging (mail_race) is 1663 not 1901. I expect it should show 1901 rows because I mentioned all.mail_sent=all/ all.mail_sent=TRUE in the code. It seems that the merge is inner join not outer join.

  mail_race<-merge(mail_sent,client_return_race,by.mail_sent=c("CLIENT_ID","CAMPAIGN_NAME","TIME"),
             by.client_return_race=c("CLIENT_ID","CAMPAIGN_NAME","TIME")
             ,all.mail_sent=TRUE)

Change `all.mail_sent=TRUE` to `all.x=TRUE`. For more info, see [How to join (merge) data frames (inner, outer, left, right)?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1299871) — zx8754, May 18 '16 at 12:35
If it works for you, copy the comment as an answer and accept it. — Paul Rougieux, May 18 '16 at 13:20

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered May 18 '16 at 12:48

0

Try this one it may help you

mail_race<-merge(mail_sent,client_return_race,all.x = T ,all.y = T)

answered May 18 '16 at 12:48

Arun kumar mahesh

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Outer join 2 data frames by multiple columns in R

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