Using dplyr and magrittr you could do the following
-=-=-=-=- library(dplyr) library(magrittr) mydata <- read.table(text=" era...1. Node_freq MEI 1 1980-01-01 -0.389855332 0.3394196488 2 1980-02-01 -0.728019153 0.2483738232 3 1980-03-01 -1.992457784 0.3516954904 4 1980-04-01 0.222760284 0.5736836269 5 1980-05-01 0.972601798 0.6289249144 6 1980-06-01 0.570725954 0.5736836269 7 1980-07-01 -0.977966324 0.4120517119 8 1980-08-01 0.056128836 -0.0104418383 9 1980-09-01 0.987304573 -0.0687520861 10 1980-10-01 1.188242495 -0.1403611624 11 1980-11-01 1.693037763 -0.0963727298 12 1980-12-01 1.173539720 -0.2539126977 13 1981-01-01 0.423698206 -0.6140040528 14 1981-02-01 -2.208098481 -0.5209122536 15 1981-03-01 -0.786830252 0.1133395650 16 1981-04-01 -0.110502611 0.3302127675 17 1981-05-01 -1.272021820 -0.1894645290 18 1981-06-01 0.394292656 -0.3736021538 19 1981-07-01 1.452892441 -0.4032687711 20 1981-08-01 0.698150002 -0.4441882433 21 1981-09-01 0.997106423 -0.1720737534 22 1981-10-01 0.247264908 -0.2436828296 23 1981-11-01 0.771663876 -0.3909929295 24 1981-12-01 -0.316341458 -0.4943145967 ") mydata %<>% mutate(Node_freq2=lead(Node_freq,1),Node_freq3=lead(Node_freq,2),MEI1=lead(MEI,1),MEI2=lead(MEI,3)) %>% select(1,2,4,5,3,6,7) -=-==-= check if mydata ist what you want ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.