Hi everyone,
I have the following call to the merge() function. How does one
prevent duplicate columns in the resulting data frame that the 2
parent data frames have in common but are not true key or "by"
variables?
data3<-merge(data1,data2,by="id")
data3
id total.x total.y balance
1 78 78 90
2 91 91 63
3 74 74 57
4 89 89 58
5 90 90 27
In this example, total is not a true key or "by" variable that
uniquely identifies rows suitable for matching purposes, but instead
just happens to be common to both sets.
In reality, I have hundreds for these "in common" variables, so I need
a solution that is tractable for a large number of "in common"
columns.
Thanks!
Dan