Group columns where some rows have the same values

[Almira]

Hi everyone! I have a dataset based on dead and alive plants over time. Since some plants have died earlier than others, these do not include data from the time points after they've died. Therefore, I have created a new data frame that includes all time steps also for the dead plants. The problem is that all extra rows in the table have NA values. For example, I am trying to have a table with all begin length per plant. In the picture you can see that after the plant died, no data is available anymore, so I want to print the begin lengths for every time step.
I have tried fixing this mostly with the ifelse() function, however this is a lot of work (since I have 144 plants). Does anyone have an idea how I can do this more easily? Thanks in advance.

[DavoWW]

Hi @Almira
Welcome to the Posit/RStudio Community Forum.

Try something like this:

library(tidyverse)
data <- data %>% 
  group_by(plant) %>%
  fill(length..t0.)  %>%
  fill(length..tn.) %>%
  fill(viability)

The default fill direction is downwards.

[Almira]

Hi @DavoWW
Thank you for your response and suggestion.
I have installed the package "tidyverse", however, the function "fill" could not be found. Do you (or somebody else) know how I can fix this? Many thanks.

[EconProf]

The fill() function is in the tidyr package. Did you run library(tidyverse) to load all of the packages in the core tidyverse, including tidyr?