R: Make Character Strings Unique

make.unique {base}

R Documentation

Make Character Strings Unique

Description

Makes the elements of a character vector unique by appending sequence numbers to duplicates.

Usage

make.unique(names, sep = ".")

Arguments

`names`	a character vector
`sep`	a character string used to separate a duplicate name from its sequence number.

Details

The algorithm used by make.unique has the property that make.unique(c(A, B)) == make.unique(c(make.unique(A), B)).

In other words, you can append one string at a time to a vector, making it unique each time, and get the same result as applying make.unique to all of the strings at once.

If character vector A is already unique, then make.unique(c(A, B)) preserves A.

Value

A character vector of same length as names with duplicates changed.

Author(s)

Thomas P Minka

Examples

make.unique(c("a", "a", "a"))
make.unique(c(make.unique(c("a", "a")), "a"))

make.unique(c("a", "a", "a.2", "a"))
make.unique(c(make.unique(c("a", "a")), "a.2", "a"))

rbind(data.frame(x=1), data.frame(x=2), data.frame(x=3))
rbind(rbind(data.frame(x=1), data.frame(x=2)), data.frame(x=3))

[Package base version 2.2.1 Index]