How do I create a factor with three levels in a dataframe in R?

Question

I created a factor for nineghteen different distances and I need to determine three levels, one for direct impact (DirImp), another for my respective indirect impact distances, (Dist="1km_","2km_","3km_","4km_","5km_","6km_","7km_","8km_","9km_","10km_","10km","20km","30km","40km","50km","60km","70km"), and other to my control area (Contrl), which start at distance 0 (DirImp) and increase kilometer per kilometer until reaching 10 km, at from this point, it increases every ten km until it reaches 70 km, and the last distance is control.

So, to clarify, in my DataFrame I have a column (Dist) that contains these distances and other columns with other information, I used this code to transform it into a factor:

column Dist estructure:


levels(MY.DTAFRAME$Dist)
[1] "DirImp"   "10km"  "10km_" "1km_"  "20km"  "2km_"  "30km" 
[8] "3km_"  "40km"  "4km_"  "50km"  "5km_"  "60km"  "6km_" 
[15] "70km"  "7km_"  "8km_"  "9km_", "control" 

How I would like it to be:
level 1 = Direct impact ("DirImp")
level 2 = Distances ("1km_","2km_","3km_","4km_","5km_","6km_","7km_","8km_","9km_","10km_","10km","20km","30km","40km","50km","60km","70km")
level 3 = Contrl Area  ("Contrl")

Column Dist = ("DirImp", "1km_","2km_","3km_","4km_","5km_","6km_","7km_","8km_","9km_","10km_","10km","20km","30km","40km","50km","60km","70km", "control")

  MY.DATAFRAME$DistFact <- factor(MY.DATAFRAME$Dist, level ordered = TRUE)


  levels(MY.DTAFRAME$DistFact)
  [1] "DirImp"   "10km"  "10km_" "1km_"  "20km"  "2km_"  "30km" 
  [8] "3km_"  "40km"  "4km_"  "50km"  "5km_"  "60km"  "6km_" 
  [15] "70km"  "7km_"  "8km_"  "9km_", "control" 

Answer 1

Is something like the following that the question is asking for?

forcats::fct_collapse(y, 
                      DirImp = grep("DirImp", y, ignore.case = TRUE, value = TRUE), 
                      Distances = grep("km", y, ignore.case = TRUE, value = TRUE),
                      Control = grep("control", y, ignore.case = TRUE, value = TRUE)
                      )
# [1] Distances Distances Distances Distances Distances Distances
# [7] Distances Distances Distances Distances Distances Distances
#[13] Distances Distances Distances Distances Distances Distances
#[19] Distances Distances Distances Distances Distances Distances
#[25] Distances Distances Distances Distances Control   Distances
#Levels: DirImp Distances Control

Or, maybe more readable,

grep_tmp <- function(pattern, x){
  grep(pattern, x, ignore.case = TRUE, value = TRUE)
}

forcats::fct_collapse(y,
                      DirImp = grep_tmp("DirImp", y), 
                      Distances = grep_tmp("^\\d+km", y),
                      Control = grep_tmp("control", y)
                      )

Data

With the levels posted in the question, here is sample data.

set.seed(1234)
x <- scan(text = '"DirImp"   "10km"  "10km_" "1km_"  "20km"  "2km_"  "30km" 
"3km_"  "40km"  "4km_"  "50km"  "5km_"  "60km"  "6km_" 
"70km"  "7km_"  "8km_"  "9km_" "control"', what = character())

y <- factor(sample(x, 30, TRUE), levels = x)