Release tidyr 1.3.0 · tidyverse/tidyr

New features

New family of consistent string separating functions:
separate_wider_delim(), separate_wider_position(),
separate_wider_regex(), separate_longer_delim(), and
separate_longer_position(). These functions are thorough refreshes of
separate() and extract(), featuring improved performance, greater
consistency, a polished API, and a new approach for handling problems. They
use stringr and supersede extract(), separate(), and separate_rows()
(#1304).
nest() gains a .by argument which allows you to specify the columns to
nest by (rather than the columns to nest, i.e. through ...). Additionally,
the .key argument is no longer deprecated, and is used whenever ... isn't
specified (#1458).
unnest_longer() gains a keep_empty argument like unnest() (#1339).
pivot_longer() gains a cols_vary argument for controlling the ordering of
the output rows relative to their original row number (#1312).
New datasets who2, household, cms_patient_experience, and
cms_patient_care to demonstrate various tidying challenges (#1333).

All functions deprecated in tidyr 1.0 and 1.2 (the old lazyeval functions
ending in _ and various arguments to unnest()) now warn on every use.
They will be made defunct in 2024 (#1406).

unnest_longer() now consistently drops rows with either NULL or empty
vectors (like integer()) by default. Set the new keep_empty argument to
TRUE to retain them. Previously, keep_empty = TRUE was implicitly being
used for NULL, while keep_empty = FALSE was being used for empty vectors,
which was inconsistent with all other tidyr verbs with this argument (#1363).
unnest_longer() now uses "" in the index column for fully unnamed
vectors. It also now consistently uses NA in the index column for empty
vectors that are "kept" by keep_empty = TRUE (#1442).
unnest_wider() now errors if any values being unnested are unnamed and
names_sep is not provided (#1367).
unnest_wider() now generates automatic names for partially unnamed
vectors. Previously it only generated them for fully unnamed vectors,
resulting in a strange mix of automatic names and name-repaired names (#1367).

Most tidyr functions now consistently disallow renaming during tidy-selection.
Renaming was never meaningful in these functions, and previously either had no
effect or caused problems (#1449, #1104).
tidyr errors (including input validation) have been thoroughly reviewed
and should generally be more likely to point you in the right direction
(#1313, #1400).
uncount() is now generic so implementations can be provided for objects
other than data frames (@mgirlich, #1358).
uncount() gains a ... argument. It comes between the required and the
optional arguments (@mgirlich, #1358).
nest(), complete(), expand(), and fill() now document their support
for grouped data frames created by dplyr::group_by() (#952).
All built in datasets are now standard tibbles (#1459).
R >=3.4.0 is now required, in line with the tidyverse standard of supporting
the previous 5 minor releases of R.
rlang >=1.0.4 and vctrs >=0.5.2 are now required (#1344, #1470).
Removed dependency on ellipsis in favor of equivalent functions in rlang
(#1314).

unnest(), unchop(), unnest_longer(), and unnest_wider() better handle
lists with additional classes (#1327).
pack(), unpack(), chop(), and unchop() all gain an error_call
argument, which in turn improves some of the error calls shown in nest()
and various unnest() adjacent functions (#1446).
chop(), unpack(), and unchop() all gain ..., which must be empty
(#1447).
unpack() does a better job of reporting column name duplication issues and
gives better advice about how to resolve them using names_sep. This also
improves errors from functions that use unpack(), like unnest() and
unnest_wider() (#1425, #1367).

pivot_longer() no longer supports interpreting values_ptypes = list()
and names_ptypes = list() as NULL. An empty list() is now interpreted as
a <list> prototype to apply to all columns, which is consistent with how any
other 0-length value is interpreted (#1296).
pivot_longer(values_drop_na = TRUE) is faster when there aren't any missing
values to drop (#1392, @mgirlich).
pivot_longer() is now more memory efficient due to the usage of
vctrs::vec_interleave() (#1310, @mgirlich).
pivot_longer() now throws a slightly better error message when
values_ptypes or names_ptypes is provided and the coercion can't be made
(#1364).
pivot_wider() now throws a better error message when a column selected by
names_from or values_from is also selected by id_cols (#1318).
pivot_wider() is now faster when names_sep is provided (@mgirlich, #1426).
pivot_longer_spec(), pivot_wider_spec(), build_longer_spec(), and
build_wider_spec() all gain an error_call argument, resulting in better
error reporting in pivot_longer() and pivot_wider() (#1408).

fill() now works correctly when there is a column named .direction in
data (#1319, @tjmahr).
replace_na() is faster when there aren't any missing values to replace
(#1392, @mgirlich).
The documentation of the replace argument of replace_na() now mentions
that replace is always cast to the type of data (#1317).