R - combining two columns of a data frame into a vector of the form c(x,y,z…)

Question

I have a data frame containing two character columns which I want to combine such that the output will be a vector of characters, like so.

Var1    Var2     Var3

a1      a2       c(a1, a2)

b1      b2       c(b1, b2)

Please note that I do not want to paste these values together but rather leave them as elements of a third vector specifically in the form c(, )

Answer 1

We can use tidyverse

library(tidyverse)
df1 %>%
     mutate(Var3 = map2(Var1, Var2, c))
#  Var1 Var2   Var3
#1   a1   a2 a1, a2
#2   b1   b2 b1, b2

---

Or using only base R

df1$Var3 <- do.call(Map, c(f = c, unname(df1)))
str(df1)
#'data.frame':   2 obs. of  3 variables:
# $ Var1: chr  "a1" "b1"
# $ Var2: chr  "a2" "b2"
#$ Var3:List of 2
#  ..$ a1: chr  "a1" "a2"
# ..$ b1: chr  "b1" "b2"

is.vector(df1$Var3[1])
#[1] TRUE
is.vector(df1$Var3[2])
#[1] TRUE

data

df1 <- data.frame(Var1 = c("a1","b1"),Var2=c("a2","b2"), stringsAsFactors=FALSE)