Fill empty rows and then filter

I'm scraping some PDF data and it needs some attention before I'm ready to move onto the next step. Column x1 is a unique ID, and then x2 is the type of acquisition. I need to replicate the UID across those types so that I can filter based on the type. Below is some sample data as well as what I want to get to. I am specifically interested in type4 right now, but may need the other types later on.

I don't have a code I've tried because I'm not sure how to approach this problem. The acquisition types are consistent- in example data, there will always be 4 types, and the UID does appear in both the x1 and x2 columns.

How Data Reads Into R:

df <- data.frame(x1 = c(100, "", "", "", "", 101, "", "", "", "", 102, "", "", "", ""),                   x2 = c(100, "type1", "type2", "type3", "type4", 101, "type1", "type2", "type3", "type4", 102, "type1", "type2", "type3", "type4"),                   x3 = c(1:15),                   x4 = c(31:45),                   x5 = c(100:114))        x1    x2 x3 x4  x5  1  100   100  1 31 100  2      type1  2 32 101  3      type2  3 33 102  4      type3  4 34 103  5      type4  5 35 104  6  101   101  6 36 105  7      type1  7 37 106  8      type2  8 38 107  9      type3  9 39 108  10     type4 10 40 109  11 102   102 11 41 110  12     type1 12 42 111  13     type2 13 43 112  14     type3 14 44 113  15     type4 15 45 114    

Desired Data

goal <- data.frame(x1 = c(100, 101, 102),                     x2 = c("type4", "type4", "type4"),                     x3 = c(5, 10, 15),                     x4 = c(35, 40, 45),                     x5 = c(104, 109, 114))       x1    x2 x3 x4  x5  1 100 type4  5 35 104  2 101 type4 10 40 109  3 102 type4 15 45 114    

I am also open to a different way to solve this problem, but duplicating the UID down until there is a new UID is the way I imagine working the best.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65745526/fill-empty-rows-and-then-filter January 16, 2021 at 09:06AM