The rbind function in R, short for row-bind, can be used to combine vectors, matrices and data frames by rows.
The following examples show how to use this function in practice.
Example 1: Rbind Vectors into a Matrix
The following code shows how to use rbind to row-bind two vectors into a single matrix:
#create two vectors a <- c(1, 3, 3, 4, 5) b <- c(7, 7, 8, 3, 2) #rbind the two vectors into a matrix new_matrix <- rbind(a, b) #view matrix new_matrix [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] a 1 3 3 4 5 b 7 7 8 3 2
Example 2: Rbind Vector to a Data Frame
The following code shows how to use rbind to row-bind a vector to an existing data frame:
#create data frame df <- data.frame(a=c(1, 3, 3, 4, 5), b=c(7, 7, 8, 3, 2), c=c(3, 3, 6, 6, 8)) #define vector d <- c(11, 14, 16) #rbind vector to data frame df_new <- rbind(df, d) #view data frame df_new a b c 1 1 7 3 2 3 7 3 3 3 8 6 4 4 3 6 5 5 2 8 6 11 14 16
Example 3: Rbind Multiple Vectors to a Data Frame
The following code shows how to use rbind to row-bind multiple vectors to an existing data frame:
#create data frame df <- data.frame(a=c(1, 3, 3, 4, 5), b=c(7, 7, 8, 3, 2), c=c(3, 3, 6, 6, 8)) #define vectors d <- c(11, 14, 16) e <- c(34, 35, 36) #rbind vectors to data frame df_new <- rbind(df, d, e) #view data frame df_new a b c 1 1 7 3 2 3 7 3 3 3 8 6 4 4 3 6 5 5 2 8 6 11 14 16 7 34 35 36
Example 4: Rbind Two Data Frames
The following code shows how to use rbind to row-bind two data frames into one data frame:
#create two data frames df1 <- data.frame(a=c(1, 3, 3, 4, 5), b=c(7, 7, 8, 3, 2), c=c(3, 3, 6, 6, 8)) df2 <- data.frame(a=c(11, 14, 16, 17, 22), b=c(34, 35, 36, 36, 40), c=c(2, 2, 5, 7, 8)) #rbind two data frames into one data frame df_new <- rbind(df1, df2) #view data frame df_new a b c 1 1 7 3 2 3 7 3 3 3 8 6 4 4 3 6 5 5 2 8 6 11 34 2 7 14 35 2 8 16 36 5 9 17 36 7 10 22 40 8
Note that R will throw an error in either of the following scenarios:
- The data frames don’t have the same number of columns.
- The data frames don’t have the same column names.
Bonus: If you want to bind together vectors, matrices, or data frames by columns, you can used the cbind function instead.
