gridding values in a data frame

dxc13 wrote:

Hi all,
I have a data frame that looks like such:
LATITUDE   LONGITUDE   TEMPERATURE   TIME
36.73         -176.43        58.32               1

and this goes on for a A LOT more records, until time=1200

I want to create a 5 degree by 5 degree grid of this data, with the value
of temperature in the appropriate grid cell.  I want one grid for each
time value.  

dxc13

The following appears to work, but is most definitely *not* in the "spirit
of R" -- it's more like a C program written in R.  Undoubtedly someone
will come up with a much more clever method. (This is always my problem; I
come up with a workable solution, but it's not elegant.)

Note: the grid has to have 37 rows, since latitude -90 to +90 (inclusive)
takes 37 5-degree increments; since -180 and +180 longitude are the same,
you would never have them as separate numbers.

d <- read.csv("weather.csv")
for (i in 1:1200)
{
    x <- d[d$TIME==i,]
    if (length(x$TIME) > 0)
    {
        print(sprintf("# of elements for time %d:  %d", i,
            length(x$TIME)))
        grid <- matrix(NA, nrow=37, ncol=72)
        for (j in 1:length(x$TIME))
        {
            lat <- 1 + trunc((90 + x$LATITUDE[j]) / 5)
            long <-  1 + trunc((180 + x$LONGITUDE[j]) / 5)
            grid[lat,long] <- x$TEMPERATURE[j]
        }
        write(t(grid), file=sprintf("time%d.csv", i), ncolumns=72,
sep=",")
    }
}