R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, including Windows and macOS. Everything in R is an object. In this post, we will see the data types and variables in the R programming language.
Variable Types
- Character – Strings
- Integer- Integers
- Numeric – Integers and Fractions
- Logical -Boolean
- Complex – Complex numbers
- Factor -Categorical variable where each label is a category
Data Structures in R
R intuitively decides variable type in the background and assigns a class to the variable. R has a variety of data types and is case-sensitive when defining variables. A variable named ‘a’ is not the same as ‘A’.
- Atomic Vectors (numerical, Integer, character, logical)
- Matrix
- Data Frames
- Lists
- Factors
Here Atomic means
R provides many functions to examine features of vectors and other objects.
class(): Gives information about the object on a high leveltypeof(): Gives information about the object’s data type on low levellength(): Gives the length of the objectattributes(): gives the information about the metadata if the object has
Variable in R
Variables in R are typically assigned using <- but can also be assigned using <- or -> ,as in x <-1 or 1 -> x
#Create variables in R and assign some value
x <- 139 +121
x
# Overwrite variables in R
x <- x/60
x
# Assign Character Values
myName <- "Nitendra Gautam"
"Nitendra Gautam" -> newName
typeof(myName) # Gives the data type of myName
# To remove the variable from Memory use rm(variable_name) command
# Removes the variables x from Memory
rm(x)
Order of Operation in R
In order to put emphasis on the order of operations, use the small bracket.
For example : totalHours <- (139 + 121) /60
Numeric Data Type
It includes the number that contains decimal points which is the default.
# Assign a value of 3 to variable a
a <- 3
print(a)
# Check Data Types in R
paste(" Class of A is ", class(a))
# Convert numeric data type into integer
b <- as.integer(a)
paste("Class of B is " , class(b ))
Character Data Type
d <-"Nitendra Gautam"
print(d)
paste("Class of d is ",class(d))
e <- '12345'
print(e)
paste(" class of e is ",class(e))
Factors Data Type
Factors data type refers to the qualitative variables. An example can be “Good”” and “Bad”.
factorVariable <- factor(c("male","female"))
print(factorVariable)
#Factors Levels
levels(factorVariable)
#Class of the factor
class(factorVariable)
#Class of Factor Levels
class(levels(factorVariable))
#Number of Levels
nlevels(factorVariable)
Logical data Type
k <- "TRUE"
class(k)
# Create a factor variable with 3 Levels and 6 Items
sV <- factor(c("good","bad","ugly","good","bad","ugly"))
class(sV)
levels(sV)
Vectors
Vector is a type of object which is used to store multiple data of same data type.
Technically, vectors can be one of two types:
- Atomic vectors
- Lists
In general, vector refers to the atomic types, not the lists. Vector can have character, integer, numeric or logical value.
v1 <- c(1,2,5.3,6,-2,4,5) # create a Numeric Vector
v2 <- c("one","two","three","four","five") # Character Vector
v3 <- c(TRUE,FALSE,TRUE,FALSE) # Logical Vector
# Refer to the element of the vector using Subscript
v1[c(3,4)] #Third and Fourth Elements of Vector
v1[4] # Get Fourth Element from Vector V1
v1[2:6] # Get elements fomr 2nd to 6th element
class(v2) # Class of Character Vector
v2[2:5] # Get elements from second to 5th element
typeof(v2) #Gives the types of Vector V2
Adding Elements in character Vector
z <-c("Sam","Ram","Hari")
## Add oneelements in Vector
z <- c(z,"Mike")
## Add Another elements in Vector
z <- c(z,"Shyam")
Given a Large Vector find the first and Last Element of the Vector
ab <- c(1:50) # Large vector from 1 to 50
ab[1] # Get the first Element
ab[length(ab)] # Get the last element which will be at the index equal to length of Vector
ab[c(ab[1],ab[length(ab)])]