I have two data.frame objects that need to get its relative complement set from one to another. I checked similar post from this site, certainly someone asked already, but it was about vector, and it is okay. However, I tried solution from existing post in this site, but I did not get my expected output. I tried several approach like setdiff, pmatch vise versa, non of them return my expected output. Can anyone propose possible of way of accomplishing this task efficiently?

example

foo <- data.frame( start=seq(1, by=4, len=6), stop=seq(3, by=4, len=6))
bleh <- data.frame(start=seq(1, by=5, len=5), stop=seq(3, by=5, len=5))

desired output:

According to complement set theory in wiki, my expected output as follows:

  start stop
1     5    7
2     9   11
3    13   15
4    17   19

How can I get relevant complement set of one data.frame to another? what's the correct way to achieving this task? Thanks

Try this

library(dplyr)
output <- anti_join(foo,bleh)
output[order(output$start),]

Another option using setdiff from dplyr package (@Frank Thanks for the correction)

setdiff(foo,bleh)
#  start stop
#1     5    7
#2     9   11
#3    13   15
#4    17   19