[R] Merge data frames but with a twist.

[Tony Breyal]

Dear all,

Question: How to merge two data frames such that new column are added
in a particular way?

I'm not actually sure how to best articulate my question to be honest,
so i hope showing you what I want to achieve will communicate my
question better.

Lets say I have two data frames:

> DF1 <- data.frame(cbind(Show=c('Firefly', 'Red Dwarf'), Measure=1:2, Datetime=c('08/26/2009 9:30 AM', '08/26/2009 9:30 AM')))

> DF2 <- data.frame(cbind(Show=c('Firefly', 'Red Dwarf'), Measure=3:4, Datetime=c('08/26/2009 11:30 AM', '08/26/2009 11:30 AM')))

And then let us merge these:

> DF3 <- merge(DF1, DF2, all=TRUE)

       Show         Measure            Datetime
1     Firefly         1                      08/26/2009 9:30 AM
2     Firefly         3                      08/26/2009 11:30 AM
3     Red Dwarf   2                      08/26/2009 9:30 AM
4     Red Dwarf   4                      08/26/2009 11:30 AM


What i would like to do is merge the data frames such that i end up
with the following:

Show           08/26/2009 9:30 AM        08/26/2009 11:30 AM
Firefly          1                                    3
Red Dwarf    2                                    4

my reason for doing this is so that i can plot a time series somehow.

I hope the formating stays when i post this message and that what i'm
trying to do is easy to understand. Thank you kindly for any help in
advance.

Tony