How can I paste text from dataframe rows, keeping only unique values in R

Question

I have a dataframe where each row represents a person, and the columns represent the names they have gone by. Some of the values are NAs or are duplicates. The data looks like the dataframe immediately below.

Name	Name1	Name2	Name3	Name4
Tom	Tom	Thomas	Tom	Tommy
Jim	NA	James	NA	Jimmy
Dave	Dave	David	NA	Davey
Tim	NA	Timothy	Tim	Timmy
Rob	Rob	NA	Rob	Robby
Sam	NA	NA	Sam	NA

I would like to combine the unique names from each row and put them into a new column, where each name only occurs once. I know i can use the paste function to produce a column where all the text values appear like this:

Name	Name1	Name2	Name3	Name4	unique
Tom	Tom	Thomas	NA	Tommy	Tom, Tom, Thomas, NA, Tommy

but I don't want the same text to appear multiple times in the unique column. How can I combine the row data such that each name only occurs once in the new $unique cell?

Name	Name1	Name2	Name3	Name4	unique
Tom	Tom	Thomas	Tom	Tommy	Tom, Thomas, Tommy
Jim	NA	James	NA	Jimmy	Jim, James, Jimmy
Dave	Dave	David	NA	Davey	Dave, David, Davey
Tim	NA	Timothy	Tim	Timmy	Tim, Timothy, Timmy
Rob	Rob	NA	Rob	Robby	Rob, Robert, Robby
Sam	NA	NA	Sam	NA	Sam

Answer 1

Using tidyverse

library(dplyr)
df1 %>% 
 rowwise %>% 
  mutate(unique = toString(unique(na.omit(c_across(everything()))))) %>% 
  ungroup

-output

# A tibble: 6 × 6
  Name  Name1 Name2   Name3 Name4 unique             
  <chr> <chr> <chr>   <chr> <chr> <chr>              
1 Tom   Tom   Thomas  Tom   Tommy Tom, Thomas, Tommy 
2 Jim   <NA>  James   <NA>  Jimmy Jim, James, Jimmy  
3 Dave  Dave  David   <NA>  Davey Dave, David, Davey 
4 Tim   <NA>  Timothy Tim   Timmy Tim, Timothy, Timmy
5 Rob   Rob   <NA>    Rob   Robby Rob, Robby         
6 Sam   <NA>  <NA>    Sam   <NA>  Sam       

Answer 2

apply ing unique row-wise, na.omit and collapse toString .

transform(dat, unique=apply(dat, 1, \(x) toString(na.omit(unique(x)))))
#   Name Name1   Name2 Name3 Name4              unique
# 1  Tom   Tom  Thomas   Tom Tommy  Tom, Thomas, Tommy
# 2  Jim  <NA>   James  <NA> Jimmy   Jim, James, Jimmy
# 3 Dave  Dave   David  <NA> Davey  Dave, David, Davey
# 4  Tim  <NA> Timothy   Tim Timmy Tim, Timothy, Timmy
# 5  Rob   Rob    <NA>   Rob Robby          Rob, Robby
# 6  Sam  <NA>    <NA>   Sam  <NA>                 Sam

You could additionally implement a sort if you like.

---

Data:

dat <- structure(list(Name = c("Tom", "Jim", "Dave", "Tim", "Rob", "Sam"
), Name1 = c("Tom", NA, "Dave", NA, "Rob", NA), Name2 = c("Thomas", 
"James", "David", "Timothy", NA, NA), Name3 = c("Tom", NA, NA, 
"Tim", "Rob", "Sam"), Name4 = c("Tommy", "Jimmy", "Davey", "Timmy", 
"Robby", NA)), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -6L))

Answer 3

df%>%
 rowid_to_column()%>%
 left_join(pivot_longer(.,-rowid)%>%
 group_by(rowid)%>%    
 summarise(value=toString(na.omit(unique(value))), .groups = 'drop'))
  rowid Name Name1   Name2 Name3 Name4               value
1     1  Tom   Tom  Thomas   Tom Tommy  Tom, Thomas, Tommy
2     2  Jim  <NA>   James  <NA> Jimmy   Jim, James, Jimmy
3     3 Dave  Dave   David  <NA> Davey  Dave, David, Davey
4     4  Tim  <NA> Timothy   Tim Timmy Tim, Timothy, Timmy
5     5  Rob   Rob    <NA>   Rob Robby          Rob, Robby
6     6  Sam  <NA>    <NA>   Sam  <NA>                 Sam