Cbinding two dataframes (equal number of rows) with a few columns having common names normally results in a data.frame with the common names altered (e.g. NameA.1, NameB.1, etc) to avoid any issues.
I noticed that even though the names have changed, there were data substitutions. Specifically, the resulting data.frame had data from the first data.frame in all columns with the same name, even in those that were supposed to have data from the second data.frame.
This one is easy to overcome, since one can change the names prior to cbind but it might sneak errors in the results.
------Edit---- I'll try to provide an example:
df1 is:
row seqnames start end width strand Region Extra1
1 chr10 8111 8111 172 * 123 456
2 chr11 8112 8112 173 * 123b 456b
and df2 is:
row seqnames start end width strand Whatever1 Whatever2
1 chr12 9111 9111 174 + ABC EFG
2 chr13 9112 9112 175 + ABCb EFGb
I perform cbind and get:
row seqnames start end width strand Region Extra1 seqnames.1 start.1 end.1 width.1 strand.1 Whatever1 Whatever2
1 chr10 8111 8111 172 * 123 456 chr10 8111 8111 172 * ABC EFG
2 chr11 8112 8112 173 * 123b 456b chr11 8112 8112 173 * ABCb EFGb
The values in the second part belong to df1 instead of df2. This only happens in columns that had the same name in df1 and df2. They have been automatically properly renamed but their data have been repeated from the first df.
Question: Is this normal behavior?
I hope this helps
Thank you again