How to Recode Values Using dplyr

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Occasionally you may be interested in recoding certain values in a dataframe in R. Fortunately this can easily be done using the recode() function from the dplyr package.

This tutorial shows several examples of how to use this function in practice.

Example 1: Recode a Single Column in a Dataframe

The following code shows how to recode a single column in a dataframe:

library(dplyr)

#create dataframe 
df #view dataframe 
df

#change 'Win' and 'Loss' to '1' and '0'
df %>% mutate(result=recode(result, 'Win'='1', 'Loss'='0'))

       player points result
1      A     24      1
2      B     29      0
3      C     13      1
4      D     15      0

Example 2: Recode a Single Column in a Dataframe and Provide NA Values

The following code shows how to recode a single column in a dataframe and give a value of NA to any value that is not explicitly given a new value:

library(dplyr)

#create dataframe 
df #view dataframe 
df

#change 'Win' to '1' and give all other values a value of NA
df %>% mutate(result=recode(result, 'Win'='1', .default=NA_character_))

       player points result
1      A     24      1
2      B     29      
3      C     13      1
4      D     15      

Example 3: Recode Multiple Columns in a Dataframe

The following code shows how to recode multiple columns at once in a dataframe:

library(dplyr)

#create dataframe 
df #recode 'player' and 'result' columns
df %>% mutate(player=recode(player, 'A'='Z'),
              result=recode(result, 'Win'='1', 'Loss'='0'))

       player points result
1      Z     24      1
2      B     29      0
3      C     13      1
4      D     15      0

You can find the complete documentation for the recode() function here.