r assign empty vector

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How to Create an Empty Vector in R (With Examples)

You can use one of the following methods to create an empty vector in R:

The following examples show how to use each of these methods in practice.

Method 1: Create Empty Vector with Length Zero

The following code shows how to create a vector with a length of zero and no specific class:

We can then fill the vector with values if we’d like:

Method 2: Create Empty Vector of Specific Class

The following code shows how to create empty vectors of specific classes:

Method 3: Create Empty Vector with Specific Length

The following code shows how to create a vector with a specific length in R:

If you know the length of the vector at the outset, this is the most memory-efficient solution in R.

Additional Resources

How to Create an Empty List in R How to Create an Empty Data Frame in R How to Convert List to Vector in R How to Convert Data Frame Column to Vector in R

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Programming Tutorials

• R: Create empty vectors and add new items to it

Empty vectors in R are the vectors of length zero. We often need to create empty vectors in a program so that elements can be added later as and when required. While there are several ways to do the same, we will be talking about few of them.

In this article will learn how to create empty vectors in R and then add elements to it in many ways.

1. using c() function 2. assigning NULL 3. using rep() function 4. using vector() function 5. using numeric() function

Let us start with the first approach creating an empty vector using c() function but before that let us also know little bit about length() function and is.null() function as we will be using both the functions to verify the length of the vector and finding out if the vector is NULL or not.

length(x) function will return the length of the vector/ data object passed in the argument (x in this case)

is.null(x) function will return TRUE in case the vector/data object passed in the argument is NULL else will return FALSE .

Frequently Asked:

• R: Create vector of zeros
• R: Find the index of an element in the vector ( 4 ways )
• Creating Vectors in R Programming (6 ways)

Creating empty vector using c() function

The c() function provides one of the primary ways to create vectors in R ,it combines its arguments to get a vector of a common type.

The below example code will create a vector my_vector of length zero and verifying the length and type of the vector.

In the below output we can see that nothing is printed on console if we try printing an empty vector, length of the vector is zero and the vector is NULL.

Now, let us look at how to add new items to my_vector .

Observe the length of vector in the output.

 Creating empty vectors using NULL

Assigning NULL to any vector will create an empty vector of  NULL type. NULL is null object in R used to represent vectors/data objects with zero length.

Let us go through the below example code.

In below output empty vector my_vector has been created with length zero and is NULL .

Adding elements to my_vector .

Creating empty vector using rep() function

The rep() function will replicate the values in the vector number of times passed in the argument. Syntax:    rep(x,times) Arguments : ‘x’ – vector or the element(text, numeric…) which has to be repeated and ‘times’ – repetition of values.

In the below code we will be creating a vector of  zero length. We will do the same using ‘NULL’ as well as ‘NA’, both will be creating empty vectors but of different types.

creating  empty vector with rep() function and ‘NA’

‘NA’ in R indicates a missing value also termed as Not Available. 

In the below code we are creating an empty vector of length zero and then printing the length on the console. We are also verifying if the vector is null and printing the type of vector created. In this case the type of the vector will be logical.

creating  empty vector with rep() function and ‘NULL’

Writing the similar code.

This time is.null(vec_rep) returned TRUE.

Adding elements to vec_rep

In the below code example we will be adding boolean values to the vector and verifying the length and type in the output.

Observe the type of the vector is logical now.

Creating empty vector using vector() function

Let us see how to create empty vectors using vector() function , vector() function produces the vector for a given length and mode in arguments. Syntax:  vector(mode=”logical”,length=0) ;  default mode is logical and default length is zero . Therefore, to create a vector of zero length we will write the below code :

Adding new items to vector_new

Creating empty vector using numeric () function

This numeric() function in R creates a double precision vector of the length specified in the argument with all values zero. Syntax: numeric(length) Argument: length specifies the length of which the vector will be created and default value of argument length is zero . Therefore, to create a vector of zero length we will be writing the below code.

Adding new items to vec_num

** Know more about HOW TO CREATE VECTORS in R

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How to Create Empty Vector in R

• Post author: Naveen Nelamali
• Post category: R Programming
• Post last modified: March 27, 2024
• Reading time: 8 mins read

There are several ways to create an empty vector in R. If a vector contains zero length with out any elements is considered an empty vector. A vector in R is a basic data structure that contains elements of the same type.

The following methods are used to create an empty vector in R, I will explain all these with examples.

• character()

Though all these methods are used to create an empty vector, each method stores different value for empty and different data type. Use is.null() function to check if the vector is  NULL or not. The is.null() function returns a boolean vector that is either  TRUE  or  FALSE .

1. Quick Examples of Create Empty Vector

The follwoing are quick examples of create empty vector in R.

2. Create Empty Vector using c()

One of the most used way to create a vector in R is by using c() combined function. Use this c() function with out any arguments to initialize an empty vector.

Use length() function to get the length of the vector . For empty vector the length would be 0.

The empty vector created with c() returns NULL as type of the vector.

In case you wanted to add element to a vector use the assigned operator or an append() function. In the below example I have added A and B values to the vector. After inserting the character elements note the type is changed to character vector .

3. Create Empty Vector using vector()

The vector() function can also be used to create an empty vector in R, by default it creates logical type. vector() function takes syntax vector(mode = "logical", length = 0) so to initialize an empty vector you don’t have to use any arguments. Note that printing empty vector using print(v) displays logical(0) .

4. By using character()

character() function in R is used to create a character vector . By default this function initializes a vector of specified length with all empty string as values, so to create empty vector just use character() function with out any arguments. It creates a vector of type character .

5. By using numeric()

The numeric() function in R creates a double-precision vector of the length specified in the argument with all values zero. It create a vector of type numeric .

6. By using rep()

The rep() is a generic function that is used to replicate the values in the input data.

7. Assigning NULL non Empty Vector

Finally, you can also create an empty vector in R by assigning a NULL value to exsisting vector. By doing this we are converting non empty vector to empty vector.

Note that is.null() function returns FALSE for vector(), character() and c() functions and TRUE for rest of the methods.

In this aricle, you have learned how to create an empty vector by using c(), vector(), character(), rep() functions. You can find the complete example from this article at Github R Programming Examples Project .

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Naveen Nelamali

• How to Create Empty Vector in R

Use the vector() Function to Create an Empty Vector in R

Use the numeric() function to create a numeric empty vector in r.

A Vector is one of the fundamental data structures in R. It is used to store elements in a sequence, but unlike lists, all elements in a vector must be of the same data type. Based on the type of data stored in a vector, we can classify it into Numerical, Logical, Integer, DateTime, Factors, and Character Vectors.

In R programming, we can create a Vector using a few built-in functions.

The vector() function in R is used to create a vector of the specified length and type specified by length and mode . The mode by default is logical but can be changed to numeric, character, or even to list or some expression.

An example to create an empty Vector is shown below:

We can use the numeric() function to create Numeric Vectors in R. We can also pass the length of the vector as its argument.

An example to create an empty Numeric Vector is shown below:

Similarly, we can also use the character() or logical() function to create empty vectors of Character and Logical type and specify its length using the length argument. We can check whether an object is a vector or not using is.vector() function, which returns True for vector objects, as shown below:

Manav is a IT Professional who has a lot of experience as a core developer in many live projects. He is an avid learner who enjoys learning new things and sharing his findings whenever possible.

Related Article - R Vector

• How to Create Combinations and Permutations of Vectors in R
• How to Find Index of an Element in a R Vector

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Vector in R

What is a vector in R programming language? Vectors are the most basic data structure in R . These structures allow to concatenate data of the same type. It should be noted that there are several ways to create a vector in R, such as joining two or more vectors, using sequences, or using random data generators.

What is a vector?

A vector is just a set of objects of the same type . You can create logical, character, numeric, complex or even factor vectors, among others. It is worth to mention that the different terms of the vector are called components. In addition, you can check the class of a vector with the class function and the type of the elements with the typeof function.

Create vector in R

Vectors in R can be created using the c function, that is used for object concatenation . You can save in memory a vector by assigning it a name with the <- operator.

Vectors can also be non-numeric . Hence, you can create vectors with characters, logical objects or other types of data objects.

However, if you mix the data inside a vector the components will be coerced .

Name vector in R

You can also name vector elements. For that purpose just choose a name for each component or just for some of them.

In addition, if you have already created the vector you can use the setNames function as follows:

Order vector in R

Sort function.

For ordering or sorting a vector you can call the sort function passing the vector as argument. By default, the function sorts in ascending order .

You can also sort data in decreasing order setting the decreasing argument to TRUE . Hence, we can call the following:

Order function

Alternatively, you can use brackets and order the vector components as an index making use of the order function.

Reverse vector

You can reverse the order of a vector in R calling the rev function.

If you just need to change the order of a vector, using sort is more efficient.

Combine vectors

Combining two or more vectors is just easy as creating one. In fact, you just need to call the c function and pass the vectors as arguments, so you can add (append) a vector to other.

It should be noted that the order of the components its relevant.

Create empty vector

Sometimes you need to initialize an empty vector in R and fill it within a loop. Whatever your needs, you can use the c function without specifying arguments. You could also use the vector function.

If you want to fill an empty vector, it is more efficient to pre-allocate memory creating a vector (for example with NA values) of the length of your final vector or using the vector function.

In this case, the difference will not be noticed, even so, for more expensive tasks, the reduction in execution time can be huge.

Compare two vectors

There are several ways to compare vectors in R. Firstly, you can compare the elements one by one with some logical operator. Note that if one vector is greater than the other, the number of elements must be multiples or an error will occur.

Secondly, you can also check if the elements of the first vector are contained in the second with %in% .

Thirdly, another option is to return the common elements between the first vector and the second:

Finally, you could compare if all the elements of the first vector are in the second with the function all as follows:

Sequence vectors in R

In R, numeric sequences can be created in different ways. Among them, you can make use of the : operator or seq and rep functions.

Generate a random vector in R

In R, there are several functions to deal with random number generation. The function sample allows you to create random sequences. In the following code we simulate 5 throws (sample size: 5) of a die (6 possible results).

The replace argument indicates whether the throw is with or without replacement. This means that if we set replace = FALSE and we get a 5 in the first throw, in the next throw we can only obtain 1, 2, 3, 4 or 6.

You can also make use of the runif or rnorm functions, that generates random sequences of numbers through the Uniform and Normal distributions, respectively.

Note on random number generation. When generating random numbers, you will obtain different values each time you execute the command, so your previous results will be different from ours. In order to set a random number generator seed to make a reproducible example you first need to call the set.seed function.

Length of vector

You can get the length of a given vector with the length function. The length of a vector is the count of its components.

Access elements of vectors in R

Accessing index elements allows you to access unique elements like the first or the last elements, subset the vector, replace, change or delete some elements of a vector. You can achieve this with numeric or logical indices.

Numeric index for accessing vector elements

In order to access the elements of a vector you can indicate inside brackets the corresponding vector subindex (positive integer).

When you access to ‘negative’ positions it is understood that you want to access all positions less those positions.

Consider, for instance, the letters given by the letters function.

In the following block code some examples are given for accessing different data.

Logical index for accessing vector elements

Other possibility is to use a logical vector . In this case, you will access to the positions with TRUE value. Let’s see an example with the maximum monthly temperature of a spanish city in 2017.

As an example, now you can look for the months with values greater than 30.

Note that the output of temp &gt; 30 is a logical vector.

Also, you can combine the logical conditions.

Add element to R vector

Now you can try to add the ‘ñ’ letter to the vector we created before. First, you need to find the previous (or the following) letter in the alphabet. We will look for the ‘n’ letter and put the ‘ñ’ just after. You can make use of the which function to find the index of the element in the vector that corresponds with the letter ‘n’.

With this in mind, with a single line of code you can concatenate the characters.

In case you want to add the element at the beginning or at the end of the vector just use the c function in the corresponding order.

How to delete a vector in R?

You can delete a vector in R with the rm function or assigning it other value, like NULL .

Delete value from vector

If you want to delete only some specific values of a vector you can use the - sign indicating the indexes you don’t want. Let’s see some examples.

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Create an Empty Vector in R

A vector is a sequence of data elements of the same basic type. A vector whose length is zero is known as an empty vector . You can create an empty vector using the c() , vector() , rep() , and numeric() function. This guide shows different ways to create an empty vector in R.

Method #1: Create an empty vector using the c() function

The combine or c() function in R is used to create vectors by combining multiple values. To create an empty vector using the c() function, do not pass anything inside the parentheses.

Here, “vector name” can be any name you want to give to the empty vector.

In the above example, the output is NULL which denotes that the vector is empty.

Method #2: Create an empty vector using the vector() function

To create an empty vector using the vector() function, do not pass anything inside the parentheses.

In the above example, logical(0) denotes an empty vector.

Method #3: Create an empty vector using a NULL object

You can assign NULL to an existing or a new vector to create an empty vector.

If you have a vector x = c(1, 2, 3) , you can convert it into an empty vector using the following code:

In the above example, we converted an existing non-empty vector to an empty vector by assigning the NULL object.

Method #4: Create an empty vector using the rep() function

rep() function in R repeats the specified object a specified number of times. It is used to create a vector with a specified number of entries. To create an empty vector using the rep() function, do not pass anything inside the parentheses.

Method #5: Create an empty vector using the numeric() function

The numeric() function creates a numeric vector of a defined length. To create an empty vector using the numeric() function, do not pass anything inside the parentheses.

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R - Producing Empty Vectors

You can use one of the following methods to create an empty vector in R:

• Create empty vector with length zero and no specific class

empty_vec <- vector()

• Create empty vector with length zero and a specific class

empty_vec <- numeric()

• Create empty vector with specific length

empty_vec <- rep(0, times=10)

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How to Create an Empty Vector in R (With Examples)

You can use one of the following methods to create an empty vector in R:

The following examples show how to use each of these methods in practice.

Method 1: Create Empty Vector with Length Zero

The following code shows how to create a vector with a length of zero and no specific class:

We can then fill the vector with values if we’d like:

Method 2: Create Empty Vector of Specific Class

The following code shows how to create empty vectors of specific classes:

Method 3: Create Empty Vector with Specific Length

The following code shows how to create a vector with a specific length in R:

If you know the length of the vector at the outset, this is the most memory-efficient solution in R.

Additional Resources

How to Create an Empty List in R How to Create an Empty Data Frame in R How to Convert List to Vector in R How to Convert Data Frame Column to Vector in R

How to Fix in Pandas: SettingWithCopyWarning

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• Operations on Vectors in R

Assigning Vectors in R Programming

Vectors are one of the most basic data structure in R . They contain data of same type. Vectors in R is equivalent to arrays in other programming languages. In R, array is a vector of one or more dimensions and every single object created is stored in the form of a vector. The members of a vector are termed as components .

Assigning of Vectors

There are different ways of assigning vectors. In R, this task can be performed using c() or using “:” or using seq() function.

Assigning vector using c() Generally, vectors in R are assigned using c() function. Example 1:

Output : 

Example 2:  

Assigning a vector using “:” In R, to create a vector of consecutive values “:” operator is used. Example 1:  

Example 3:  

If there is a mismatch of intervals, it skips the last value.

Assigning Vectors with seq()   In order to create vectors having step size, R provides seq() function. Example 1:  

It’s possible to specify the required length of the vector and step size is computed automatically.

  Output : 

Assigning Named Vectors in R

It’s also possible to create named vectors in R such that every value has a name assigned with it. R provides the names() function in order to create named vectors.

Suppose one wants to create a named vector with the number of players in each sport. To do so, first, he will create a numeric vector containing the number of players. Now, he can use the names() function to assign the name of the sports to the number of players.

In order to get a sport with a particular number of players:

Explanation :

Baseball has nine players so it displays Baseball as output. Since here there is no sport with one player in this named vector, no output is generated and it displays the output as the character(0). 

Access elements of a vector

In R in order to access the elements of a vector, vector indexing could be performed.

Note: Please note that indexing in R begins from 1 and not 0.

Example 1:  

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Set NA to Blank in R (2 Examples)

In this article, I’ll explain how to replace NA with blank values in the R programming language .

Table of contents:

Let’s take a look at some R codes in action.

Example 1: Replace NA with Blank in Vector

This example illustrates how to set NA values in a vector to blank.

As a first step, we have to create an example vector in R:

The previous output of the RStudio console shows that our example vector contains six elements, whereby three of these elements are NA (i.e. Not Available or missing data).

If we want to replace these NA values by blanks, it is important to know the data type of our vector. We can check that by using the class function:

Our vector is a character string .

That’s good news, because if the vector would have the factor class we would have to convert it to the character class first. Check out this tutorial for more info.

Now, we can substitute our NA values by blanks using the is.na function :

The previous output of the RStudio console shows our updated vector object. As you can see, all missing values were replaced by blank characters (i.e. “”).

Example 2: Replace NA with Blank in Data Frame Columns

Example 2 illustrates how to substitute the NA values in all variables of a data frame with blank characters.

First, we have to create some example data in R:

In Table 1 it is shown that we have created a data frame with six rows and three columns. Each of our columns contains NA values.

In the next step, I’m replicating our data frame. This is important, in case we want to keep an original version of our data:

Next, we are converting all data frame variables to the character class.

We only have to apply this step in case we have factor variables in our data. However, it can not hurt to apply the following line of code:

Finally, we can set all NA values in our data frame to blank using the is.na function:

By running the previous R syntax we have created Table 2, i.e. a data frame with blank values instead of missings.

Video, Further Resources & Summary

Would you like to know more about NA values? Then you may want to watch the following video of my YouTube channel. I show the content of this tutorial in the video:

In addition, you may want to have a look at the related tutorials of my homepage. I have released several tutorials already.

• Replace NA with 0
• Replace NA with Last Observed Value
• Merge Two Unequal Data Frames & Replace NA with 0
• Replace Values in Data Frame Conditionally
• Replace Inf with NA in Vector & Data Frame
• Introduction to R Programming

You have learned in this tutorial how to exchange missing data with blank character values in the R programming language. In case you have any further questions, let me know in the comments. Besides that, don’t forget to subscribe to my email newsletter in order to get updates on the newest articles.

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How to Create an Empty List in R

You may be wondering, Why should I create an empty list? Well, sometimes, you need to start with nothing—an empty canvas—and then fill it with amazing colors. The same logic applies to an empty list.

Start with an empty list and fill the list with proper elements.

Here are three ways to create an empty list in R:

• Using list()  function
• Using vector()  function
• Assigning NULL to empty an existing list

An empty list is a list that does not contain any elements.

Method 1: Using list() to create a list with zero-length

The list() function is a no-brainer. You don’t have to pass any parameters, and it will create an empty list with zero length out of the box.

Visual representation

We just used the list() function and printed it, which will print an empty list. If you find the length of the list, it will be 0.

Method 2: Using vector() to create with the specific length

The vector(“list”, length = 0) for a more flexible approach when creating different types of empty vectors. Here, empty vectors become a list.

Here, we create an empty list with a specific length (5).

Method 3: Assigning NULL to empty an existing list

In this approach, we are dealing with an existing list. If you assign NULL to an existing list, it will become an empty list. The <<- operator assigns global variables.

That’s it!

Krunal Lathiya is a seasoned Computer Science expert with over eight years in the tech industry. He boasts deep knowledge in Data Science and Machine Learning. Versed in Python, JavaScript, PHP, R, and Golang. Skilled in frameworks like Angular and React and platforms such as Node.js. His expertise spans both front-end and back-end development. His proficiency in the Python language stands as a testament to his versatility and commitment to the craft.

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