r - Collapse text by group in data frame

Question

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Answer 1

Simply use aggregate :

aggregate(df$text, list(df$group), paste, collapse="")
##   Group.1      x
## 1       a a1a2a3
## 2       b   b1b2
## 3       c c1c2c3

Or with plyr

library(plyr)
ddply(df, .(group), summarize, text=paste(text, collapse=""))
##   group   text
## 1     a a1a2a3
## 2     b   b1b2
## 3     c c1c2c3

ddply is faster than aggregate if you have a large dataset.

EDIT : With the suggestion from @SeDur :

aggregate(text ~ group, data = df, FUN = paste, collapse = "")
##   group   text
## 1     a a1a2a3
## 2     b   b1b2
## 3     c c1c2c3

For the same result with earlier method you have to do :

aggregate(x=list(text=df$text), by=list(group=df$group), paste, collapse="")

EDIT2 : With data.table :

library("data.table")
dt <- as.data.table(df)
dt[, list(text = paste(text, collapse="")), by = group]
##    group   text
## 1:     a a1a2a3
## 2:     b   b1b2
## 3:     c c1c2c3