The stitch package provides convenient and safe LEFT JOINS for table-like objects. LEFT JOINS are commonly used in data science applications when combining transaction/fact-based details with dimensional data.

The function stitch() is intended to make this easy and fool-proof. It is a pipeable function, that works on any table-like object.

• Use with any table-like objects (data.frames, data.tables, tibbles)
• Pipeable
• Column Order Preserving
• Use NATURAL JOINS (using matching column names)
• Automatically handling name-collisions by auto prefix collisions with RHS name

1. Supports LEFT JOINS using on, key or a NATURAL JOIN.
2. Preserves column ordering, keeping LHS names on the left.
3. Handles column name collisions by auto-prefixing RHS column names with the name of the data set.

• Idempotent: Multiple joins of the same data do not result
• Auto Prefix of LHS names

You can install the released version of stitch from CRAN with:

install.packages("stitch")

This is a basic example which shows you how to solve a common problem:

library(stitch)

left <- data.table( letters = letters[1:5], numbers=1:5 )
right <- data.table( lets = letters[1:6], numbers=1:6 )

left %>% stitch(right, on=c("letters"="lets" ) )