`unstack`

Reshapes a table from long to wide format.

Category: Language Fundamentals > Data Types

Syntax

U = unstack(S, vars, ivar)

Spreads the values of vars into new variables named by the categories in ivar.

Description

In long format each measurement is one row, with a column saying what was measured. unstack turns that into one row per group with a column per measurement kind, which is the shape most plotting and statistics functions expect. The remaining variables identify the rows; they must determine a single value for each pair.

stack does the opposite.

Input arguments

S: Table in long format.
vars: Data variable(s) whose values go into the new columns.
ivar: Variable whose distinct values become the names of the new columns.

Output arguments

U: Table with one row per distinct combination of the remaining variables and one new column per category of ivar.

Example

Long to wide

T = table([1;1;2;2], {'p';'q';'p';'q'}, [10;20;30;40], 'VariableNames', {'id','key','val'});
unstack(T, 'val', 'key')

Output

ans = 2×3 table

    id    p     q 
    __    __    __

    1     10    20
    2     30    40

unstack