Devesh, Note that DataFrame is immutable. withColumn returns a new DataFrame instead of adding a column in-pace to the DataFrame being operated.
So, you can modify the for loop like: for (j in 1:lev) { dummy.df.new<-withColumn(df, paste0(colnames(cat.column),j), ifelse(df$Species==levels(as.factor(unlist(cat.column)))[j],1,0) ) df<-dummy.df.new } As you can see, withColumn supports adding only one column, it may be more convenient if withColumn supports adding multiple columns at once. There is a JIRA requesting such feature (https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SPARK-12225) which is still under discussion. If you desire this feature, you could comment on it. From: Franc Carter [mailto:franc.car...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 3, 2016 7:40 PM To: Devesh Raj Singh Cc: user@spark.apache.org Subject: Re: sparkR not able to create /append new columns Yes, I didn't work out how to solve that - sorry On 3 February 2016 at 22:37, Devesh Raj Singh <raj.deves...@gmail.com<mailto:raj.deves...@gmail.com>> wrote: Hi, but "withColumn" will only add once, if i want to add columns to the same dataframe in a loop it will keep overwriting the added column and in the end the last added column( in the loop) will be the added column. like in my code above. On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 5:05 PM, Franc Carter <franc.car...@gmail.com<mailto:franc.car...@gmail.com>> wrote: I had problems doing this as well - I ended up using 'withColumn', it's not particularly graceful but it worked (1.5.2 on AWS EMR) cheerd On 3 February 2016 at 22:06, Devesh Raj Singh <raj.deves...@gmail.com<mailto:raj.deves...@gmail.com>> wrote: Hi, i am trying to create dummy variables in sparkR by creating new columns for categorical variables. But it is not appending the columns df <- createDataFrame(sqlContext, iris) class(dtypes(df)) cat.column<-vector(mode="character",length=nrow(df)) cat.column<-collect(select(df,df$Species)) lev<-length(levels(as.factor(unlist(cat.column)))) varb.names<-vector(mode="character",length=lev) for (i in 1:lev){ varb.names[i]<-paste0(colnames(cat.column),i) } for (j in 1:lev) { dummy.df.new<-withColumn(df,paste0(colnames (cat.column),j),if else(df$Species==levels(as.factor(un list(cat.column)) [j],1,0) ) } I am getting the below output for head(dummy.df.new) output: Sepal_Length Sepal_Width Petal_Length Petal_Width Species Species1 1 5.1 3.5 1.4 0.2 setosa 1 2 4.9 3.0 1.4 0.2 setosa 1 3 4.7 3.2 1.3 0.2 setosa 1 4 4.6 3.1 1.5 0.2 setosa 1 5 5.0 3.6 1.4 0.2 setosa 1 6 5.4 3.9 1.7 0.4 setosa 1 Problem: Species2 and Species3 column are not getting added to the dataframe -- Warm regards, Devesh. -- Franc -- Warm regards, Devesh. -- Franc