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How I can select rows from a dataframe that do not match?

Asked 2011-04-28T01:05:55.043
57

I'm trying to identify the values in a data frame that do not match, but can't figure out how to do this.

# make data frame 
a <- data.frame( x =  c(1,2,3,4)) 
b <- data.frame( y =  c(1,2,3,4,5,6))

# select only values from b that are not in 'a'
# attempt 1: 
results1 <- b$y[ !a$x ]

# attempt 2:  
results2 <- b[b$y != a$x,]

If a = c(1,2,3) this works, as a is a multiple of b. However, I'm trying to just select all the values from data frame y, that are not in x, and don't understand what function to use.

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1 Answer

84

If I understand correctly, you need the negation of the %in% operator. Something like this should work:

subset(b, !(y %in% a$x))

> subset(b, !(y %in% a$x))
  y
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answered 2011-04-28T02:39:13.220

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