MoveFront {DataCombine}

Move variables to the front of a data frame.

Description

MoveFront moves variables to the front of a data frame.

Usage

MoveFront(data, Var, exact = TRUE, ignore.case = NULL, fixed = NULL)

Arguments

data

a data frame object containing the variable you want to move.

Var

a character vector naming the variables you would like to move to the front of the data frame. The order of the variables should match the order you want them to have in the data frame, i.e. the first variable in the vector will be the first variable in the data frame.

exact

logical. If TRUE (the default), only exact variable names are matched.

ignore.case

logical. If FALSE, the variable name matching is case sensitive and if TRUE, case is ignored during matching. Only available when exact = FALSE.

fixed

logical. If TRUE, pattern is a string to be matched as is. Overrides all conflicting arguments. Only available when exact = FALSE.

Source

Based primarily on a Stack Overflow answer written by rcs: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3369959/moving-columns-within-a-data-frame-without-retyping.

Examples

# Create fake data
A <- B <- C <- 1:50
OldOrder <- data.frame(A, B, C)

# Move C to front
NewOrder1 <- MoveFront(OldOrder, "C")
names(NewOrder1)

# Move B and A to the front
NewOrder2 <- MoveFront(OldOrder, c("B", "A"))
names(NewOrder2)

## Non-exact matching (example from Felix Hass)
 # Create fake data
 df <- data.frame(dummy = c(1,0), Name = c("Angola", "Chad"),
                 DyadName = c("Government of Angola - UNITA",
                 "Government of Chad - FNT"),
                 Year = c("2002", "1992"))

 df <- MoveFront(df, c("Name", "Year"), exact = FALSE)

 names(df)

 df <- MoveFront(df, c("Name", "Year"), exact = TRUE)

 names(df)