I have two multivariate time series x and y, both covering approximately the same range in time (one starts two years before the other, but they end on the same date). Both series have missing observations in the form of empty columns next to the date column, and also in the sense that one of the series has several dates that are not found in the other, and vice versa.
I would like to create a data frame (or similar) with a column that lists all the dates found in x OR y, without duplicate dates. For each date (row), I would like to horizontally stack the observations from x next to the observations from y, with NA's filling the missing cells. Example:
>x
"1987-01-01" 7.1 NA 3
"1987-01-02" 5.2 5 2
"1987-01-06" 2.3 NA 9
>y
"1987-01-01" 55.3 66 45
"1987-01-03" 77.3 87 34
# result I would like
"1987-01-01" 7.1 NA 3 55.3 66 45
"1987-01-02" 5.2 5 2 NA NA NA
"1987-01-03" NA NA NA 77.3 87 34
"1987-01-06" 2.3 NA 9 NA NA NA
What I have tried: with the zoo package, I've tried the merge.zoo method, but this seems to just stack the two series next to each other, with the dates (as numbers, e.g. "1987-01-02" shown as 6210) from each series appearing in two separate columns.
I've sat for hours getting almost nowhere, so all help is appreciated.
EDIT: some code included below as per suggestion from Soumendra
atcoa <- read.csv(file = "ATCOA_full_adj.csv", header = TRUE)
atcob <- read.csv(file = "ATCOB_full_adj.csv", header = TRUE)
atcoa$date <- as.Date(atcoa$date)
atcob$date <- as.Date(atcob$date)
# only number of observations and the observations themselves differ
>str(atcoa)
'data.frame': 6151 obs. of 8 variables:
$ date :Class 'Date' num [1:6151] 6210 6213 6215 6216 6217 ...
$ max : num 4.31 4.33 4.38 4.18 4.13 4.05 4.08 4.05 4.08 4.1 ...
$ min : num 4.28 4.