R tidyr::unite 如何防止空白列被删除？

Question

I am trying to create a .txt file to submit a National Death Index (NDI) query (hence the txt format). Among other data, one needs to submit last and first name. The first name should be truncated to 20 characters and the first name should be truncated to 15 characters.

Please note I am first saving the query as a .csv and then saving the .csv as .txt from Excel (not R)

I am doing something very inefficient but this is not the part giving me trouble.

### Last name

column_1 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 1, 1)
column_2 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 2, 2)
column_3 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 3, 3)
column_4 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 4, 4)
column_5 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 5, 5)
column_6 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 6, 6)
column_7 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 7, 7)
column_8 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 8, 8)
column_9 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 9, 9)
column_10 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 10, 10)
column_11 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 11, 11)
column_12 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 12, 12)
column_13 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 13, 13)
column_14 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 14, 14)
column_15 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 15, 15)
column_16 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 16, 16)
column_17 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 17, 17)
column_18 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 18, 18)
column_19 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 19, 19)
column_20 <- substring(cases_alive$last, 20, 20) 

### First name

column_21 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 1, 1)
column_22 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 2, 2)
column_23 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 3, 3)
column_24 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 4, 4)
column_25 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 5, 5)
column_26 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 6, 6)
column_27 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 7, 7)
column_28 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 8, 8)
column_29 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 9, 9)
column_30 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 10, 10)
column_31 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 11, 11)
column_32 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 12, 12)
column_33 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 13, 13)
column_34 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 14, 14)
column_35 <- substring(cases_alive$first, 15, 15)

### Create NDI data frame 

ndi <- data.frame(column_1, column_2, column_3, column_4, column_5, column_6, column_7, column_8, column_9, column_10, ### Last name
                  column_11, column_12, column_13, column_14, ### Last name
                  column_15, column_16, column_17, column_18, column_19, column_20, ### Last name
                  column_21, column_22, column_23, column_24, column_25, column_26, column_27, column_28, # First name
                  column_29, column_31, column_32, column_33, column_34, column_35) # First name

Now I want to merging:

ndi <- tidyr::unite(ndi, col, column_1, column_2, column_3, column_4, column_5, column_6, column_7, column_8, column_9, column_10, 
                    column_11, column_12, column_13, column_14, 
                    column_15, column_16, column_17, column_18, column_19,column_20, 
                    column_21, column_22, column_23, column_24, column_25, column_26, column_27, column_28,
                    column_29, column_31, column_32, column_33, column_34, column_35, sep = "", na.rm = FALSE)

The problem : The blank "columns" are being removed. For example, if someone's last name has 5 characters ("smith") and their first name has 4 characters ("john") the output is "smithjohn" and not "smith john ". In other words, the blank spaces are being lost.

Sorry for the long disorganized question. I am clearly a newbie at coding. Thanks much.

Answer 1

使用sprintf怎么样？

ndi <- data.frame(col = sprintf('%20s %15s',cases_alive$last, cases_alive$first))