How to combine multiple character columns into a single column in an R data frame

Try this:

AL_Blocks$BLOCK_ID<- with(AL_Blocks, paste0(STATE, COUNTY, TRACT, BLOCK))

there was a typo in County... it should've been COUNTY. Also, you don't need the collapse parameter.

I hope that helps.

You can use do.call and paste0. Try:

AL_Blocks$BLOCK_ID <- do.call(paste0, AL_Block[c("STATE", "COUNTY", "TRACT", "BLOCK")])

Example output:

do.call(paste0, AL_Blocks[c("STATE", "COUNTY", "TRACT", "BLOCK")])
# [1] "010010211001053" "010010211001054" "010010211001055" "010010211001056"
# [5] "010010211001057" "010010211001058"
do.call(paste0, AL_Blocks[2:5])
# [1] "010010211001053" "010010211001054" "010010211001055" "010010211001056"
# [5] "010010211001057" "010010211001058"

---

You can also use unite from "tidyr", like this:

library(tidyr)
library(dplyr)
AL_Blocks %>% 
  unite(BLOCK_ID, STATE, COUNTY, TRACT, BLOCK, sep = "", remove = FALSE)
#   LOGRECNO        BLOCK_ID STATE COUNTY  TRACT BLOCK
# 1       60 010010211001053    01    001 021100  1053
# 2       61 010010211001054    01    001 021100  1054
# 3       62 010010211001055    01    001 021100  1055
# 4       63 010010211001056    01    001 021100  1056
# 5       64 010010211001057    01    001 021100  1057
# 6       65 010010211001058    01    001 021100  1058

where "AL_Blocks" is provided as:

AL_Blocks <- structure(list(LOGRECNO = c("60", "61", "62", "63", "64", "65"), 
    STATE = c("01", "01", "01", "01", "01", "01"), COUNTY = c("001", "001", 
    "001", "001", "001", "001"), TRACT = c("021100", "021100", "021100", 
    "021100", "021100", "021100"), BLOCK = c("1053", "1054", "1055", "1056",
    "1057", "1058")), .Names = c("LOGRECNO", "STATE", "COUNTY", "TRACT", 
    "BLOCK"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -6L))

Or try this

DF$BLOCKID <-
  paste(DF$LOGRECNO, DF$STATE, DF$COUNTY, 
        DF$TRACT, DF$BLOCK, sep = "")

(Here is a method to set up the dataframe for people coming into this discussion later)

DF <- 
  data.frame(LOGRECNO = c(60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65),
             STATE = c(1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1),
             COUNTY = c(1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1), 
             TRACT = c(21100, 21100, 21100, 21100, 21100, 21100), 
             BLOCK = c(1053, 1054, 1055, 1056, 1057, 1058))