[R] Populate one data frame with values from another dataframe for rows that match

[Kevin Wamae]

I'm trying to populate the column “pf_mcl” in myDF1 with values from myDF2, where rows match based on column "studyno" but the solutions I have found so far don't seem to be giving me the desired output.

Below is a snapshot of the data.frames.

myDF1 <- structure(list(studyno = c("J1000/9", "J1000/9", "J1000/9", "J1000/9",
"J1000/9", "J1000/9"), date = structure(c(17123, 17127, 17135,
17144, 17148, 17155), class = "Date"), pf_mcl = c(NA_integer_,
NA_integer_, NA_integer_, NA_integer_, NA_integer_, NA_integer_
), year = c(2016, 2016, 2016, 2016, 2016, 2016)), .Names = c("studyno",
"date", "pf_mcl", "year"), row.names = c(NA, 6L), class = "data.frame")

myDF2 <- structure(list(studyno = c("J740/4", "J1000/9", "J895/7", "J931/6",
"J609/1", "J941/3"), pf_mcl = c(0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L)), .Names = c("studyno",
"pf_mcl"), row.names = c(NA, 6L), class = "data.frame")

myDF2 is a well curated subset of myDF1. Some rows in the two datasets match based on "studyno", one may find that values are missing in myDF1$pf_mcl or the values are wrong.

All I want to do is identify a matching row in myDF2 and populate myDF1$pf_mcl with the value in myDF2$pf_mcl. If a row does not match based on “studyno”, the value should remain the same.

It's probably worth mentioning, the two data frames have other columns...I have selected a few for example purposes.



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