How to Use separate() Function in R

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The separate() function from the tidyr package in R is “used to separate a single data frame or table column into multiple columns.”

Syntax

separate(
  df,
  col,
  into,
  sep = "[^[:alnum:]]+",
  remove = TRUE,
  convert = FALSE
)

Parameters

  1. df: It is the data frame.
  2. column: It is a column that is to be separated.
  3. into: The names of columns used for the data to be separated.
  4. sep: This is the value to separate the data. default = _[^[:alnum:]]+_, regular expression.
  5. remove: If set to TRUE, remove input column(s) from the output data frame. Default = TRUE.
  6. convert: This is used for datatype conversions. Default = FALSE.

Example 1: Separate Column into Two Columns

library(tidyr)

df <- data.frame(
  name = c("John_Doe", "Jane", "Alex_Brown_Jr")
)

df_separated <- separate(df,
  col = "name", into = c("first_name", "last_name"),
  sep = "_", extra = "merge", fill = "right"
)

print(df_separated)

Output

   first_name   last_name
1    John          Doe
2    Jane          <NA>
3    Alex         Brown_Jr

Example 2: Separate Column into More Than Two Columns

The separate() function from the tidyr package in R can be used to split a column into more than two columns. The process is similar to splitting into two columns; you just provide more column names in the argument.

library(tidyr)

df <- data.frame(column_to_split = c("A_B_C", "D_E_F", "G_H_I", "J_K_L"))

df_separated <- separate(df,
  col = "column_to_split",
  into = c("part1", "part2", "part3"),
  sep = "_"
)

print(df_separated)

Output

Separate Column into More Than Two Columns

That’s it!

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