What is the R equivalent of the "except" function?

Question

I have two datasets, df1 and df2, having the same number of columns and the same header. I want to remove all rows in df1 that are also present in df2. In SQL, I'd use the function except. df1 except df2.

What is the equivalent of except in R?

df1:

cust_id
1
2
3

df2

cust_id
1
2

df1 except df2 would result in:

cust_id
3

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 16 '23 at 17:34

4

You can use setdiff

df1 <- setdiff(df1, df2)

df1
#>   cust_id
#> 1       3

answered Jan 16 '23 at 17:34

Allan Cameron

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Thanks, setdiff solves it for me. Just being curious: is there an equivalent of except in dplyr or data.table? – GitZine Jan 16 '23 at 17:36
2

@GitZine yes, there's a `dplyr::setdiff` too – Allan Cameron Jan 16 '23 at 17:37
Which one do you recommend to be used? base or dplyr setdiff, performance wise. – GitZine Jan 16 '23 at 17:38
1

@Gitzine I get the impression the main reason for the existence of the dplyr version is for type safety. The base R version benchmarks slightly quicker. – Allan Cameron Jan 16 '23 at 17:55

What is the R equivalent of the "except" function?

1 Answers1