Separate a character column into multiple columns

Superseded

separate() has been superseded by separate_wider_delim().

Separates a single column into multiple columns using a user supplied separator or regex.

If a separator is not supplied one will be automatically detected.

Note: Using automatic detection or regex will be slower than simple separators such as "," or ".".

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

Arguments

.df: A data frame
col: The column to split into multiple columns
into: New column names to split into. A character vector. Use NA to omit the variable in the output.
sep: Separator to split on. Can be specified or detected automatically
remove: If TRUE, remove the input column from the output data.table
convert: TRUE calls type.convert() with as.is = TRUE on new columns
...: Arguments passed on to methods

Examples

df <- data.table(x = c("a", "a.b", "a.b", NA))

# "sep" can be automatically detected (slower)
df %>%
  separate(x, into = c("c1", "c2"))
#> # A tidytable: 4 × 2
#>   c1    c2   
#>   <chr> <chr>
#> 1 a     NA   
#> 2 a     b    
#> 3 a     b    
#> 4 NA    NA   

# Faster if "sep" is provided
df %>%
  separate(x, into = c("c1", "c2"), sep = ".")
#> # A tidytable: 4 × 2
#>   c1    c2   
#>   <chr> <chr>
#> 1 a     NA   
#> 2 a     b    
#> 3 a     b    
#> 4 NA    NA