base (version 3.3)

make.unique: Make Character Strings Unique

Description

Makes the elements of a character vector unique by appending sequence numbers to duplicates.

Usage

make.unique(names, sep = ".")

Arguments

names

a character vector

sep

a character string used to separate a duplicate name from its sequence number.

Value

A character vector of same length as names with duplicates changed, in the current locale's encoding.

Details

The algorithm used by make.unique has the property that make.unique(c(A, B)) == make.unique(c(make.unique(A), B)).

In other words, you can append one string at a time to a vector, making it unique each time, and get the same result as applying make.unique to all of the strings at once.

If character vector A is already unique, then make.unique(c(A, B)) preserves A.

See Also

make.names

Examples

make.unique(c("a", "a", "a"))
make.unique(c(make.unique(c("a", "a")), "a"))

make.unique(c("a", "a", "a.2", "a"))
make.unique(c(make.unique(c("a", "a")), "a.2", "a"))

rbind(data.frame(x = 1), data.frame(x = 2), data.frame(x = 3))
rbind(rbind(data.frame(x = 1), data.frame(x = 2)), data.frame(x = 3))