How to reshape data from long to wide format

Using reshape function:

reshape(dat1, idvar = "name", timevar = "numbers", direction = "wide")

The new (in 2014) tidyr package also does this simply, with gather()/spread() being the terms for melt/cast.

Edit: Now, in 2019, tidyr v 1.0 has launched and set spread and gather on a deprecation path, preferring instead pivot_wider and pivot_longer, which you can find described in this answer. Read on if you want a brief glimpse into the brief life of spread/gather.

library(tidyr)
spread(dat1, key = numbers, value = value)

From github,

tidyr is a reframing of reshape2 designed to accompany the tidy data framework, and to work hand-in-hand with magrittr and dplyr to build a solid pipeline for data analysis.

Just as reshape2 did less than reshape, tidyr does less than reshape2. It's designed specifically for tidying data, not the general reshaping that reshape2 does, or the general aggregation that reshape did. In particular, built-in methods only work for data frames, and tidyr provides no margins or aggregation.

You can do this with the reshape() function, or with the melt() / cast() functions in the reshape package. For the second option, example code is

library(reshape)
cast(dat1, name ~ numbers)

Or using reshape2

library(reshape2)
dcast(dat1, name ~ numbers)

Another option if performance is a concern is to use data.table's extension of reshape2's melt & dcast functions

(Reference: Efficient reshaping using data.tables)

library(data.table)

setDT(dat1)
dcast(dat1, name ~ numbers, value.var = "value")

#          name          1          2         3         4
# 1:  firstName  0.1836433 -0.8356286 1.5952808 0.3295078
# 2: secondName -0.8204684  0.4874291 0.7383247 0.5757814

And, as of data.table v1.9.6 we can cast on multiple columns

## add an extra column
dat1[, value2 := value * 2]

## cast multiple value columns
dcast(dat1, name ~ numbers, value.var = c("value", "value2"))

#          name    value_1    value_2   value_3   value_4   value2_1   value2_2 value2_3  value2_4
# 1:  firstName  0.1836433 -0.8356286 1.5952808 0.3295078  0.3672866 -1.6712572 3.190562 0.6590155
# 2: secondName -0.8204684  0.4874291 0.7383247 0.5757814 -1.6409368  0.9748581 1.476649 1.1515627