summary on "merge variables"

[Bernd Puschner <puschner@psyres-stuttgart.de>]

thanks to r. lancelot, andreas christmann, jason connor, charles wright,
mohit arora, daniel erdin, jingshan zhang, greg snow, jim pratt, mark
durst, bill dunlap, samuel buttrey, rolf turner, remy van de ven, nick
ellis, david cane, and murray efford for their great suggestions. the
best solution to my problem (see below) is

maerz01k1.gr$THER.OQ1 <-  paste(as.character(maerz01k1.gr$THER),
as.character(maerz01k1.gr$OQ1NORM))

bernd

***
dear splus-users,

another beginner's question. i have a dataset looking like this:

> maerz01k1.gr
Grouped Data: SCSW.010 ~ IN.THER | CODE
    CODE   SCSW.010 IN.THER THER ZUGES OQ1NORM
 1 989001  0.57     -64     bt    45    1
 2 989001  0.96     170     bt    45    1
 3 989001  0.76     298     bt    45    1
 5 989002  1.87     -31     pd    60    2
 6 989002  1.14     -7      pd    60    2
 7 989002  1.44     143     pd    60    2
 8 989002  0.54     519     pd    60    2
 9 98A001  0.40     -43     pd    50    3
 10 98A001 0.39     131     pd    50    3
 11 98A001 0.13     479     pd    50    3
 17 98A004 1.22      32     pa    160   3 etc.

how do i merge 2 variables (in spss i would use "concat"), e.g. ther and
oq1norm in order to 
get

CODE THER.OQ1
989001 bt1
989001 bt1
989001 bt1
989002 pd2
989002 pd2
989002 pd2
989002 pd2
98A001 pd3
98A001 pd3
98A001 pd3
98A004 pa3?

it's probably obvious to everyone except for me. thank you so much for
any advice.

take care

bernd