This is a useful tip, but there is some confusion in the thread that makes it hard to follow. Just clarifying, I hope, so that folks can easily follow it in the future.
The original posting had a set of encounter histories with descriptions that did not match the histories. There were 2 males and 1 female for the first history and 4 males for the second history (but the descriptions indicated that there was 1 male and 3 females). In the example subsequently posted, the first history is the same but the second history includes 3 males and 1 female (the opposite of what was originally described): > I am sorry but here is an example >> test >> t1 t2 t3 t4 M F id >> 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 >> 2 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 >> 3 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 >> 4 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 >> 5 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 >> 6 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 >> 7 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 > Working from the provided example above (3 males and 1 female for the second history), all that is needed to condense this set of histories is the following (I dropped the ID column because I didn't see why it was included): > library(reshape) > tmp1 <- read.table("test.txt", header=T) > tmp2 <- melt(tmp1, measure.var=c("M", "F")) > condensed <- cast(tmp2, t1 + t2 + t3 + t4 ~ variable, fun.aggregate=sum) > condensed t1 t2 t3 t4 M F 1 1 0 0 0 2 1 2 1 0 1 1 3 1 Once "M" and "F" are included in the 'melt' command they cannot be used in the 'cast' command. A more compact solution comes from 'recast': > tmp3 <- recast(tmp1, t1 + t2 + t3 + t4 ~ variable, > fun.aggregate=sum, measure.var=c("M", "F")) > tmp3 t1 t2 t3 t4 M F 1 1 0 0 0 2 1 2 1 0 1 1 3 1 ----- David Hewitt Research Fishery Biologist USGS Klamath Falls Field Station (USA) -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/RESHAPE-package-question.-tp18792801p18814133.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.