[R] assign to data.frame

[Michaell Taylor]

I have two large data.frames which I would like to combine. Merge works, but 
is slow and a "merge" is not really required.  Rather a rbind will do the 
trick.  However, there are a number of variables which need to be created in 
each data.frame to make the columns of the two data.frames similar.

say,

d1 <- data.frame(ind1=1:10,ind2=letters[1:10],c_rnorm(10))
d2 <- data.frame(ind1=21:30,ind2=letters[11:20],e_rnorm(10))

thus, d1 contains 'c' and d2 contains 'e' - with no overlap in ind1 and ind2.

If I :

d1$e <- rep(NA,10)
d2$c <- rep(NA,10)

I can,

d <- rbind(d1,d2)  # which is where I want to go. 

However, there are actually a number of such variables to be created. Sooo, I 
tried:

add.to.d2 <- names(d1)[!is.element(names(d1),names(d2)]
for (V in add.to.d2)
	assign(paste('d2$',V,sep=''),rep(NA,10))
	}
(ditto for the other data.frame)

which gives me a d2$c in the global space, but not in the d2 dataframe. I see 
options for environment specification in assign, but can't seem to manage to 
specify a dataframe as the environ. Also tried: assign(as.name(paste('d2$',V, 
sep='')),rep(NA,10))  -- which wouldn't seem needed, and indeed, not.

gotta be something I am missing and I am sure it is in the help files 
somewhere, but .... any hints?

Thanks.

Michaell
=========================================
Michaell Taylor, PhD

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._