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Merging Data Frames With Long Names

Hi,

I tried merging two data frames (One_17#20, Two_18#30) using the R merge function this way:

x <- merge(One_17#20, Two_18#30)

I got the following error:

Error in merge(One_17) : object 'One_17' not found.

I thought this might be due to the long names with underscore/# character. Does anyone know the way around this problem?

Thanks

r merge
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updated by Devon Ryan Devon Ryan • written by robjohn7000 robjohn7000

This is not a bioinformatics question.

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written by Michael Dondrup Michael Dondrup

2 answers

That # is a comment character, the system only sees merge(One_17 and I'm surprised it didnt give the error missing ), that might have been next if there was a variable named One_17

You can't use # in variable names in many programming languages.

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written by karl.stamm karl.stamm

As karl.stamm mentioned, don't use # in variable names (in general, don't use symbols other than "_", which I'm sure is also a special character in some language I've never used). If you must, though, then

x <- merge(`One_17#20`, `Two_18#30`)

will do what you want.

• 192 views • link
written by Devon Ryan Devon Ryan

Thanks for your comments!

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written by robjohn7000 robjohn7000

You might have used it, the underscore x_4 was an assignment operator in R until 1.8.0 and also in S-Plus.

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written by Michael Dondrup Michael Dondrup

That predates my usage of R by at least 7 years (and I've never used S-Plus) :)

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written by Devon Ryan Devon Ryan

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