Concatenate values in multiple columns into a single column

This function concatenates the values in multiple columns of a data frame into a single column. It filters out blank, NA, and excluded values before concatenating the remaining values with a space in between. It also removes parenthesis and extra spaces from the concatenated string, unless specified otherwise.

Usage

concatenate_columns(
  data,
  columns,
  exclude_value,
  new_column_name,
  keep_parenthesis = TRUE
)

Arguments

data: A data frame containing the columns to concatenate
columns: A character vector of column names to concatenate
exclude_value: A character vector of strings to exclude from the concatenated values
new_column_name: A character string of the name of the new column to create. This column can be one of the existing columns used to concatenate.
keep_parenthesis: A boolean indicating whether to keep parenthesis in the concatenated string (default is TRUE)

Value

A modified data frame with a new column containing the concatenated values

Examples

# Concatenate consumption unit columns in IHS5 data
hces_data <- data.frame(
food_item_code = c(101, 102, 103, 104),
cons_unit_name = c("OTHER (SPECIFY)", "BASIN", "PIECE", "OTHER (SPECIFY)"),
cons_unit_oth = c("HEAP", NA, "Soy", "TUBE"),
cons_unit_size_name = c("SMALL", "HEAPED", NA, "LARGE")
)

# Concatenate food item columns in HCES data
hces_data <- concatenate_columns(data = hces_data, columns = c("cons_unit_name", "cons_unit_oth",
"cons_unit_size_name"), exclude_value = c("SPECIFY", "OTHER"), new_column_name="survey_food_item", 
keep_parenthesis = FALSE)