R Concatenate column in data frame with one value/string

Question

I am trying to concatenate some data in a column of a df, with "0000"

I tried to use paste() in a loop, but it becomes very performance heavy, as I have +2.000.000 rows. Thus, it takes forever.

Is there a smart, less performance heavy way to do it?

#DF:
CUSTID    VALUE
103       12
104       10
105       15
106       12
...       ...

#Desired result:
#DF:
CUSTID    VALUE
0000103   12
0000104   10
0000105   15
0000106   12
...       ...

How can this be achieved?

Like this: `paste0("0000", DF$CUSTID)` – Dave2e Oct 10 '18 at 18:29 — Dave2e, Oct 10 '18 at 18:29

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 10 '18 at 18:31

paste is vectorized so it'll work with a vector of values (i.e. a column in a data frame. The following should work:

DF <- data.frame(
  CUSTID = 103:107,
  VALUE = 13:17
)

DF$CUSTID <- paste0('0000', DF$CUSTID)

Should give you

   CUSTID VALUE
1 0000103    13
2 0000104    14
3 0000105    15
4 0000106    16
5 0000107    17

R Concatenate column in data frame with one value/string

1 Answers1