Data Types in R

In R programming, there are five basic data types. Also, everything in R is an object, so we will refer to these data types as classes of objects. So, these five types of objects are:

Numeric
Integer
Complex
Logical
Character

Let's briefly look at each of these.

Numeric

In R, decimal values such as 8.5 are numeric. You can assign a numeric value to a variable and then that variable will be of numeric data type.

For any variable or object, you can check it's data type by using the class command.

1> # Assign a decimal value to x
2>
3> x

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1> #Assign a value to a variable
2> x <- 8
3>
4> #check the class type of x
5> class(x)
6[1] "numeric"
7>
8> # You will notice that it is numeric.
9>
10> # Use the as.integer() function to create an integer
11>
12> y <- as.integer(8)
13>
14> #check the class type of yx
15> class(y)
16[1] "integer"
17>
18> > # It is an integer now
19>
20

1> #Create sample variables
2> x <- 5
3> y <- 7
4>
5> #Check if y is less than x
6> z <- y < x
7>
8> # z will have a logical value. Let's print it
9>
10> z
11[1] FALSE
12>
13> #Print the class of z
14> class(z)
15[1] "logical"
16>
17

1> #Create a numeric variable
2>
3> x <- 8.75
4>
5> #Print the variable x
6>
7> x
8[1] 8.75
9>
10> #Print the class of x
11>
12> class(x)
13[1] "numeric"
14>
15> #convert x into a character value
16>
17> y <- as.character(x)
18>
19> #Print the variable y
20>
21> y
22[1] "8.75"
23>
24> #Print the class of y
25>
26> class(y)
27[1] "character"
28>
29

1> #Define sample character variables
2> fname <- "John"
3> lname <- 'Doe'
4>
5> # Concatenate strings using paste function
6> paste(fname, lname)
7[1] "John Doe"
8>
9> #Create a readable string using sprintf() function
10> #Use %s for strings and %d for numeric values
11>
12> sprintf("His first name is %s and last name is %s",fname,lname)
13[1] "His first name is John and last name is Doe"
14>
15> # Extract a substr from a long string. In the following example, we
16> # are extracting stock symbol from text
17>
18> substr("Google's stock symbol is GOOG", start=26, stop=29)
19[1] "GOOG"
20>
21> #Replace the first occurance of a word in a string by another word.
22>
23> sub("John","Sam","His first name is John")
24[1] "His first name is Sam"
25>
26

#> [1] "I go for a walk at 7:05 a.m."

Data Types in R

Numeric

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Using Variables in R

Creating and Using Vectors in R

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Integer

Complex

Logical

Character

Standard Logical Operations

Standard String Operations

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