Why is the data frame empty after subsetting by specific rows?

[jovenden]

####### Reprex 3rd November 2022 #########

install.packages(c("httr", "jsonlite", "openssl","wkb","tidyverse","dplyr","progress"))
library(httr)
library(jsonlite)
library(openssl)
library(wkb)
library(tidyverse)
library(dplyr)
library(progress)

Making dataframe

a = c("apple", "pear", "banana", "apple", "pear", "banana")
b = c(10, 19, 50, 1, 9, 5)
c = c(TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE)
my_df <- data.frame(a,b,c)

Nesting dataframe

my_df %>%
nest_by(a) %>%
assign("my_df",. , inherits= TRUE)

I can subset a particular row .....

apples <- my_df[1, ]

But, I need to subset using specific row names that are not consecutive.

Names <- c("apple", "pear")

Both lines of code produce a blank dataframes. Why is this? Can you help?

apples_pears <- my_df[c("apple", "pear"), ]
apples_pears <- my_df[c(Names),]

End of reprex

[FJCC]

The values in column a are not row names. You have to refer to column a to get the subset you want. Here are two methods to do that:

library(tidyverse)
a = c("apple", "pear", "banana", "apple", "pear", "banana")
b = c(10, 19, 50, 1, 9, 5)
c = c(TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE)
my_df <- data.frame(a,b,c)

my_df %>%
  nest_by(a) %>%
  assign("my_df",. , inherits= TRUE)

Names <- c("apple", "pear")
row.names(my_df)
#> [1] "1" "2" "3"

apples_pears <- my_df[my_df$a %in% Names,]
apples_pears
#> # A tibble: 2 × 2
#> # Rowwise:  a
#>   a                   data
#>   <chr> <list<tibble[,2]>>
#> 1 apple            [2 × 2]
#> 2 pear             [2 × 2]

#Also, filter is a function in dplyr
filter(my_df, a %in% Names)
#> # A tibble: 2 × 2
#> # Rowwise:  a
#>   a                   data
#>   <chr> <list<tibble[,2]>>
#> 1 apple            [2 × 2]
#> 2 pear             [2 × 2]

^{Created on 2022-11-02 with reprex v2.0.2}

[jovenden]

Thanks very much for the two solutions. Also, many thanks to taking the time to read and respond. It was much appreciated.