I would like to rename station in DF to something like DA056 to Happy and AB786 to Sad.
library(tidyverse) DF1 <- data.frame(Station = rep("DA056",3), Level = 100:102) DF2 <- data.frame(Station = rep("AB786",3), Level = 201:203) DF <- bind_rows(DF1,DF2) We can use factor with labels specified for corresponding levels
library(dplyr) DF <- DF %>% mutate(Station = factor(Station, levels = c("DA056", "AB786"), labels = c("Happy", "Sad"))) DF$Station #[1] Happy Happy Happy Sad Sad Sad #Levels: Happy Sad Or with recode
DF %>% mutate(Station = recode(Station, DA056 = 'Happy', AB786 = 'Sad')) # Station Level #1 Happy 100 #2 Happy 101 #3 Happy 102 #4 Sad 201 #5 Sad 202 #6 Sad 203 If there are many values to be changed, a better option is a join after creating a key/val dataset
keyval <- data.frame(Station = c("DA056", "AB786"), val = c("Happy", "Sad"), stringsAsFactors = FALSE) DF %>% left_join(keyval) %>% mutate(Station = coalesce(val, Station)) Or with base R
DF$Station <- with(df, factor(Station, levels = c("DA056", "AB786"), labels = c("Happy", "Sad"))) An option is to use dplyr::case_when:
library(dplyr) DF1 <- data.frame(Station = rep("DA056",3), Level = 100:102, stringsAsFactors = F) DF2 <- data.frame(Station = rep("AB786",3), Level = 201:203, stringsAsFactors = F) DF <- bind_rows(DF1,DF2) DF <- DF %>% mutate(Station = case_when( Station == "DA056" ~ "Happy", Station == "AB786" ~ "Sad", TRUE ~ Station)) Output
> DF Station Level 1 Happy 100 2 Happy 101 3 Happy 102 4 Sad 201 5 Sad 202 6 Sad 203 You can do it using case_when:
DF %>% mutate(Station = case_when(Station == "DA056" ~ "Happy", Station =="AB786" ~ "Sad")) Another simple solution
DF$Station = ifelse(DF$Station == "DA056", "Happy", "Sad") 
Stationare NOT row names. It is a separate columnrow nameunder station column.