The “separate_rows” Function in R

• Package: tidyr

• Purpose: To separate cells that contain multiple values into multiple rows, duplicating all other data as necessary.

• General Class: Data Reshaping

• Required Argument(s):

• data: The data frame to separate rows from.

• ...: Columns to separate rows on.

• Notable Optional Arguments:

• sep: The separator to use to split values. Default is ‘\s+’ (one or more spaces).

• Example (with Explanation):

• # Load necessary packages
  library(tidyr)
  
  # Create a sample data frame with cells containing multiple values
  data <- data.frame(
  ID = c(1, 2),
  Values = c("A B", "C D E")
  )
  
  # Separate cells containing multiple values into multiple rows
  result <- separate_rows(data, Values)
  
  # Display the result
  print(result)

• In this example, the separate_rows function from the tidyr package is used to split the cells containing multiple values in the ‘Values’ column of the sample data frame data into separate rows. Each value in the cells is separated into its own row, duplicating the ‘ID’ column for each row as necessary. The result is a new data frame result containing the original data with cells containing multiple values separated into multiple rows.