reconcile: Reconcile Two Versions of a Data Frame

In datetoiso: Convert and Impute Dates to ISO Standard ("International Organization for Standardization")

Reconcile Two Versions of a Data Frame

Description

This function compares a new and an old version of a data set to identify inserted, deleted, and updated records, as well as column-level changes. The comparison can be performed using a specified index column (or columns), or—if no index is provided—based on a full-row comparison across all common columns.

Usage

reconcile(new_df, old_df, index = NA, lookup_columns = NA)

Arguments

new_df	A data frame containing the most recent version of the data.
old_df	A data frame containing the preceding version of the data, used as the reference for comparison.
index	A character vector specifying the variable(s) that uniquely identify records (e.g., '"recordid"'). If 'NA', all common columns are used as the matching key, but some enhanced functionality (such as detecting newly added or removed rows) will not be available.
lookup_columns	A character vector specifying which columns should be compared. By default 'NA', meaning that all columns common to both 'new_df' and 'old_df' are used. If specific column names are provided, comparisons are restricted to those columns.

Details

When 'index' is supplied, rows are matched by the specified index variable(s), allowing the function to detect newly added records, removed records, and detailed field-level changes. When 'index = NA', the function falls back to a full reconciliation based on the auxiliary comparison routine, using all common columns as the key.

Column comparison is further controlled by 'lookup_columns': if this argument is left as 'NA', all columns common to 'new_df' and 'old_df' are evaluated; otherwise, only the specified subset of columns is compared.

Value

A data frame summarizing the reconciliation results. For each record, the output includes the current values, index variables, detected status ('"NEW"', '"DELETED"', '"UPDATED"', '"UNCHANGED"'), the set of changed columns, and a human-readable description of the differences.

Author(s)

Lukasz Andrzejewski

Examples

reconcile(data.frame(col1 = c("AA", "B"), id = c(1, 2)),
data.frame(col1 = c("A", "B"), id = c(1, 3)), index = "id")

datetoiso documentation built on Dec. 7, 2025, 9:06 a.m.