Concatenate matrix columns, keeping NAs

Concatenate the columns of a matrix or df. Like paste, but any row containing one or more NAs gives in an NA in the corresponding element of the result. Argument sep can be a vector, specifying different separators between different columns.

Usage

pasteMat(x, ..., sep = NULL)

Arguments

x

a matrix or data frame. Can also be a vector if one or more ‘...’ arguments are used.

...

additional arguments to be combined, together with x, with cbind.

sep

a character vector of separators between the columns, can be of length larger than 1. The default is sep = " " (as for paste.

Details

If the ... arguments are used, they are combined by the equivalent of x <- cbind(x, ...).

pasteMat gives a result similar to the one that would be obtained from paste if the columns of x are passed to that individually. The main difference is in the treatment of NAs.

Any row of x containing one or more NAs results in an NA in the corresponding element of the result.

There can be different separators between the columns. This can be obtained by setting sep to be of length greater than one.

Value

a character vector

Author

Georgi N. Boshnakov

See also

paste, timeDate

Examples

a <- c("a",  NA, "b", NA, "c")
b <- c("x", "y",  NA, NA, "z")

## turns NAs into the string "NA"
paste(a, b)
#> [1] "a x"   "NA y"  "b NA"  "NA NA" "c z"  

## keeps NAs in the result
pasteMat(a, b)
#> [1] "a x" NA    NA    NA    "c z"
pasteMat(cbind(a, b)) # same
#> [1] "a x" NA    NA    NA    "c z"

dts <- c("1989-09-28", NA, "2004-08-30", "1990-02-09")
tms <- c(  "23:12:55",   "10:34:02",   NA,   "11:18:23")

paste(dts, tms)
#> [1] "1989-09-28 23:12:55" "NA 10:34:02"         "2004-08-30 NA"      
#> [4] "1990-02-09 11:18:23"
## this throws error (since NAs are converted to the string NA):
##   timeDate(paste(dts, tms), FinCenter = "Europe/Zurich")

## these work
td1 <- timeDate(pasteMat(cbind(dts, tms)), FinCenter = "Europe/Zurich")
td2 <- timeDate(pasteMat(dts, tms), FinCenter = "Europe/Zurich")       
identical(td1, td2)                                                    
#> [1] TRUE
td1                                                                       
#> Europe/Zurich
#> [1] [1989-09-29 00:12:55] [NA]                  [NA]                 
#> [4] [1990-02-09 12:18:23]