reshape: from long to wide format

This is to continue on the topic of using the melt/cast functions in reshape to convert between long and wide format of data frame. Here is the example I found helpful in generating covariate table required for PEER (or Matrix_eQTL) analysis:

Here is my original covariate table:

Let's say we need to convert the categorical variables such as condition, cellType, batch, replicate, readLength, sex into indicators (Note: this is required by most regression programs like PEER or Matrix-eQTL, since for example the batch 5 does not match it's higher than batch 1, unlike the age or PMI). So, we need to convert this long format into wide format. Here is my R code for that:

library(reshape2)

categorical_varaibles = c("batch", "sex", "readsLength", "condition", "cellType", "replicate");

for(x in categorical_varaibles) {cvrt = cbind(cvrt, value=1); cvrt[,x]=paste0(x,cvrt[,x]); cvrt = dcast(cvrt, as.formula(paste0("... ~ ", x)), fill=0);}

Here is output: