Write values from one vector in another with char var as ID

[shardur]

Hi,
I have the following problem - I have one vector (variance_vec) which has variances for different materials in it (created by a tapply loop) which looks like:

Material A    0.8
Material B    0.21
.
.
.

Now I have another vector (mat_vec) which has random draws of materials in it, like:

Material A
Material D
Material B
Materrial A
.
.
.

I know want to assign the variance to every material in the mat_vec vector.
I tried it like:

#1
mat_vec_var<- variance_vec[[mat_vec]]
#2
mat_vec_var<- adv_days[[c(mat_vec)]]

Both methods did not work for vectors.
How would I need to adjust my code to get a vector of variances for the randomly drawn materials? I know how I could do it in a loop but there are lots of observations in the vecotors so I would like to not use a loop for that.
Thanks for the help!

[cderv]

Hi,

If i understood correctly, I would go like that

# with vectors
variance_vec <- c('Material A' = 0.8,  'Material B' = 0.21)
mat_vect <- c('Material A',
              'Material D',
              'Material B',
              'Material A')

variance_vec[mat_vect]
#> Material A       <NA> Material B Material A 
#>       0.80         NA       0.21       0.80

Also, in such case, I would work with data.frame and use dplyr and other tidyverse. I could really help once the case become more complex than simple vetor.
You have nice join fonctions that works well.

library(dplyr)
# using enframe to simplify vector -> df transformation
variance_df <- tibble::enframe(variance_vec)
variance_df
#> # A tibble: 2 x 2
#>   name       value
#>   <chr>      <dbl>
#> 1 Material A  0.8 
#> 2 Material B  0.21
# this is like a data.frame but with nice printing
mat_df <- tibble(name = mat_vect)
mat_df
#> # A tibble: 4 x 1
#>   name      
#>   <chr>     
#> 1 Material A
#> 2 Material D
#> 3 Material B
#> 4 Material A
# table operation : join 
mat_df %>%
  left_join(variance_df, by = 'name')
#> # A tibble: 4 x 2
#>   name       value
#>   <chr>      <dbl>
#> 1 Material A  0.8 
#> 2 Material D NA   
#> 3 Material B  0.21
#> 4 Material A  0.8

^{Created on 2019-05-07 by the reprex package (v0.2.1.9000)}

[shardur]

Thanks for the help, that solved it!