Difference between rbind() and bind_rows() in R

Question

On the web,i found that rbind() is used to combine two data frames and the same task is performed by bind_rows() function.

Then i don't understand what is the difference between these two functions and which is more efficient to use ??

Answer 1

Apart from few more differences, one of the main reasons for using bind_rows over rbind is to combine two data frames having different number of columns. rbind throws an error in such a case whereas bind_rows assigns "NA" to those rows of columns missing in one of the data frames where the value is not provided by the data frames.

Try out the following code to see the difference:

a <- data.frame(a = 1:2, b = 3:4, c = 5:6)
b <- data.frame(a = 7:8, b = 2:3, c = 3:4, d = 8:9)

Results for the two calls are as follows:

rbind(a, b)
> rbind(a, b)
Error in rbind(deparse.level, ...) : 
  numbers of columns of arguments do not match

library(dplyr)
bind_rows(a, b)
> bind_rows(a, b)
  a b c  d
1 1 3 5 NA
2 2 4 6 NA
3 7 2 3  8
4 8 3 4  9