Catherine pivot_wider

library(tidyr)

long <- data.frame(Lname = c("A","B","C"),
                   c = c("c1","c2","c2"),
                   country=c("NZ","NZ","AL"))

> pivot_wider(data=long, values_from="Lname",names_from="country")
# A tibble: 2 x 3
  c     NZ    AL   
  <chr> <chr> <chr>
1 c1    A     NA   
2 c2    B     C    

cool, thanks so much!

I think this may give you what you want. If the c is not important, it can be removed from group_by().

long2 = long %>% 
  filter(country != "NA") %>%
  group_by(country, c) %>%
  summarize(Lname=toString(Lname)) %>%
  pivot_wider(values_from="Lname",names_from="country")

ooh that is so close, but it ends up with multiple Lnames in a single cell for some reason?
output (without the c) is:
long2

A tibble: 1 x 2

AL NZ

1 C, B A, B

Change relevant bit to:

toString(unique(Lname))

hmm, I get same output with that?

but I can deal with this, thanks so much all!