Hello all,
(I tried to ask this question earlier today, but later realised I over-simplified the question; the answers I received were correct, but I couldn't use them because of my over-simplification of the problem in the original question. Here's my 2nd attempt...)
I have a data frame in R that looks like:
"Timestamp", "Source", "Target", "Length", "Content"
0.1 , P1 , P2 , 5 , "ABCDE"
0.2 , P1 , P2 , 3 , "HIJ"
0.4 , P1 , P2 , 4 , "PQRS"
0.5 , P2 , P1 , 2 , "ZY"
0.9 , P2 , P1 , 4 , "SRQP"
1.1 , P1 , P2 , 1 , "B"
1.6 , P1 , P2 , 3 , "DEF"
2.0 , P2 , P1 , 3 , "IJK"
...
and I want to convert this to:
"StartTime", "EndTime", "Duration", "Source", "Target", "Length", "Content"
0.1 , 0.4 , 0.3 , P1 , P2 , 12 , "ABCDEHIJPQRS"
0.5 , 0.9 , 0.4 , P2 , P1 , 6 , "ZYSRQP"
1.1 , 1.6 , 0.5 , P1 , P2 , 4 , "BDEF"
...
Trying to put this into English, I want to group consecutive records with the same 'Source' and 'Target' together, then print out a single record per group showing the StartTime, EndTime & Duration (=EndTime-StartTime) for that group, along with the sum of the Lengths for that group, and a concatenation of the Content (which will all be strings) in that group.
The TimeOffset values will always increase throughout the data frame.
I had a look at melt/recast and have a feeling that it could be used to solve the problem, but couldn't get my head around the documentation. I suspect it's possible to do this within R, but I really don't know where to start. In a pinch I could export the data frame out and do it in e.g. Python, but I'd prefer to stay within R if possible.
Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide
