title: R table formatting long form to wide form
body: <p>I'm trying to reformat a dataset from long to wide format - example below (it wouldn't let me copy paste anything so hopefully the format comes out ok). I tried using spread() function but it didn't give me what I need.</p>
  <p>Date       Characteristic     Result
  4/27/2000   Phosphorus         0.05
  4/27/2000   Nitrogen           1.2
  4/27/2000   Ammonia            0.08
  6/1/2000    Phosphorus         0.07
  6/1/2000    Nitrogen           0.4
  6/1/2000    Ammonia            0.09     to this format:</p>
  <pre><code>        Phosphorus         Nitrogen     Ammonia
  </code></pre>
  <p>4/27/2000   0.05               1.2          0.08
  6/1/2000    0.07               0.4          0.09</p>