Separate Two Values in Single Column in Data Table Object in R

To separate two values in single column in data.table object in R, we can follow the below steps −

• First of all, create a data.table object.

• Then, use separate function from tidyr package to separate the values in single column.

Example

Create the data.table object

Let’s create a data.table object as shown below −

library(data.table)
DT<-
data.table(x=sample(c("A,B","B,C","C,D","D,E","E,F","F,G","G,H"),25,replace=TRUE))
DT

Output

On executing, the above script generates the below output(this output will vary on your system due to randomization) −

    x
1:  C,D
2:  C,D
3:  C,D
4:  A,B
5:  F,G
6:  A,B
7:  C,D
8:  G,H
9:  B,C
10: C,D
11: G,H
12: G,H
13: G,H
14: C,D
15: F,G
16: G,H
17: C,D
18: C,D
19: F,G
20: G,H
21: E,F
22: A,B
23: G,H
24: D,E
25: F,G
     x

Separate values in column

Using separate function from tidyr package to separate the values in column x of data.table object DT −

library(data.table)
DT<-
data.table(x=sample(c("A,B","B,C","C,D","D,E","E,F","F,G","G,H"),25,replace=TRUE))
library(tidyr)
DT %>% separate(x,c("Group1","Group2"),sep=",")

Output

  Group1 Group2
1:  C     D
2:  C     D
3:  C     D
4:  A     B
5:  F     G
6:  A     B
7:  C     D
8:  G     H
9:  B     C
10: C     D
11: G     H
12: G     H
13: G     H
14: C     D
15: F     G
16: G     H
17: C     D
18: C     D
19: F     G
20: G     H
21: E     F
22: A     B
23: G     H
24: D     E
25: F     G
   Group1 Group2