Concatenating Objects in R Programming – combine() Function

In R programming, coercion function c() and combine() function are similar to each other but are different in a way. combine() functions acts like c() and unlist() functions but uses consistent dplyr coercion rules. Moreover, combine() function is used to combine factors in R programming. In this article, we’ll see the implementation of combine() and c() function with same outputs and different outputs on the same operation.

Syntax: combine(x, y, …)

Parameters:
x, y, …. are vectors to combine

Example 1:

In this example, we’ll see the same output of both these functions on same operation.

# Package required
install.packages("dplyr")

# Load the library
library(dplyr)

x <- c(1, 2, 3)
y <- c(4, 5, 6)

# Using c() function
cat("Using c() function:\n")
c(x, y)

cat("\n")
# Using combine() function
cat("Using combine() function:\n")
combine(x, y)

Output:

Using c() function:
[1] 1 2 3 4 5 6

Using combine() function:
[1] 1 2 3 4 5 6

Example 2:
In this example, we’ll see the different outputs of both these functions on the same operation.

library(dplyr)

x <- factor(c("a", "a", "b", "c"))
y <- factor(c("b", "a", "c", "b"))

# Using c() function
cat("Using c() function:\n")
c(x, y)

# Using combine() function
cat("\n")
cat("Using combine() function:\n")
combine(x, y)

Output:

Using c() function:
[1] 1 1 2 3 2 1 3 2

Using combine() function:
[1] a a b c b a c b
Levels: a b c