Separate

These functions cover two scenarios.

1. You have a column that contains multiple delimited values and you want to split those into multiple columns.
2. You have a column that contains multiple delimited values and you want to split those into multiple rows.

For example, if you collect data on pizza toppings and you receive data such as this.

Name	Toppings
Dan	anchovies, tomatoes, garlic
Crystal	sausage, red peppers
Fox	cheese

You can split Toppings into columns (wide data)

Name	Topping1	Topping2	Topping3
Dan	anchovies	tomatoes	garlic
Crystal	sausage	red peppers
Fox	cheese

Or you can split Toppings into rows (long data)

Name	Toppings
Dan	anchovies
Dan	tomatoes
Dan	garlic
Crystal	sausage
Crystal	red peppers
Fox	cheese

Separate into columns

• Separate columns

Separate into rows

• Separate rows

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Main functions used in examples

Package	Functions
tidyr	separate(); separate_rows()

Other functions used in examples

Package	Functions
dplyr	select()
stringr	str_split()
tidyr	unnest()

Resources

• https://garrettgman.github.io/tidying/
• https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/tidyr/versions/1.1.4/topics/separate
• https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stringr/vignettes/regular-expressions.html