How to convert selected rows into a column in R?

Question

I have been working with a dataset which requires me to split certain selected rows and convert them into columns. The spread function which I normally use for these kind of things didn't exactly work the way I wanted. This is closest reproducible example that I have got:

df<-data.frame(person=c("Matt","Tom","Shane","Shane"),salary=c(100,200,500,400))
> df
  person salary
1   Matt    100
2    Tom    200
3  Shane    500
4  Shane    400

Suppose this is the Data Frame that I have got, how do I split the rows where person == Shane into a seperate column? This is what I have been trying to achieve:

  person salary  Shane
1   Matt    100  500
2   Tom     200  400

How do I go about doing this. Thanks a lot in advance.

Answer 1

I am unsure why you would want to do this, but using dplyr:

df2<-filter(df,person!='Shane')
df2$Shane<-filter(df,person=='Shane')$salary
> df2
  person salary Shane
1   Matt    100   500
2    Tom    200   400