sidpat

cSplit <- function(indt, splitCols, sep = ",", direction = "wide", 
                   makeEqual = NULL, fixed = TRUE) {
  ## requires data.table >= 1.8.11
  require(data.table)
  if (!is.data.table(indt)) setDT(indt)
  if (any(!vapply(indt[, splitCols, with = FALSE],
                  is.character, logical(1L)))) {
    indt[, eval(splitCols) := lapply(.SD, as.character),
         .SDcols = splitCols]
  }