将多组测量列(宽格式)reshape 为单列(长格式)

从1.0.0版起，tidyr软件包的功能pivot_longer()就可以使用多个值/度量列从宽格式reshape 为长格式.

这比之前的tidyr策略gather()比spread()(见@AndrewMacDonald的答案)要好，因为属性不再被删除(在下面的示例中，日期仍然是日期，数字仍然是数字).

library("tidyr")
library("magrittr")

a <- structure(list(ID = 1L, 
                    DateRange1Start = structure(7305, class = "Date"), 
                    DateRange1End = structure(7307, class = "Date"), 
                    Value1 = 4.4, 
                    DateRange2Start = structure(7793, class = "Date"),
                    DateRange2End = structure(7856, class = "Date"), 
                    Value2 = 6.2, 
                    DateRange3Start = structure(9255, class = "Date"), 
                    DateRange3End = structure(9653, class = "Date"), 
                    Value3 = 3.3),
               row.names = c(NA, -1L), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"))

pivot_longer()(对应:pivot_wider())与gather()类似.

如果所有列名都遵循特定的模式，如Start_1、End_1、Start_2等，这是最简单的.

(names(a) <- sub("(\\d)(\\w*)", "\\2_\\1", names(a)))
#>  [1] "ID"               "DateRangeStart_1" "DateRangeEnd_1"  
#>  [4] "Value_1"          "DateRangeStart_2" "DateRangeEnd_2"  
#>  [7] "Value_2"          "DateRangeStart_3" "DateRangeEnd_3"  
#> [10] "Value_3"

pivot_longer(a, 
             cols = -ID, 
             names_to = c(".value", "group"),
             # names_prefix = "DateRange",
             names_sep = "_")
#> # A tibble: 3 x 5
#>      ID group DateRangeEnd DateRangeStart Value
#>   <int> <chr> <date>       <date>         <dbl>
#> 1     1 1     1990-01-03   1990-01-01       4.4
#> 2     1 2     1991-07-06   1991-05-04       6.2
#> 3     1 3     1996-06-06   1995-05-05       3.3

或者，可以使用提供更精细控制的pivot spec进行reshape (参见下面的链接):

spec <- a %>%
    build_longer_spec(cols = -ID) %>%
    dplyr::transmute(.name = .name,
                     group = readr::parse_number(name),
                     .value = stringr::str_extract(name, "Start|End|Value"))

pivot_longer(a, spec = spec)

^{由reprex package(v0.2.1)于2019-03-26创建}

另见:https://tidyr.tidyverse.org/articles/pivot.html