Create Character Vector in R

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How to create a character vector in R? Use character() or c() functions to create a character vector. character() creates a vector with a specified length of all empty strings whereas c() creates a vector with the specified values, if all values are strings then it creates a character vector.

A vector whose all elements are either string or NA values is called a character vector.

1. Quick Examples of Create Character Vector

The following are quick examples of how to create a character vector in R.


# Quick Examples

# Create Character Vector
v <- c('a1','ABC','bc','A',NA)
print(v)
typeof(v)

# Create Character Vector of empty Strings
v <- character(5)
length(v)
print(v)

# Create Empty Character Vector
v <- character()

2. Create Character Vector in R

c() function is used to create a vector. By passing all elements with characters to c() function it creates a character vector in R. Use typeof() to check whether the created is a character vector or not.


# Create Character Vector
v <- c('a1','ABC','bc','A',NA)
print(v)
typeof(v)

Yields below output


# Output
> print(v)
[1] "a1"  "ABC" "bc"  "A"   NA   
> typeof(v)
[1] "character"

3. Create a Character Vector of Empty Strings

The character() function creates a character vector in R of a specified length. All elements of the vector will contain the empty string “”. The following example initializes a character vector of length 5 with all empty strings.


# Create Character Vector of empty Strings
v <- character(5)
length(v)
print(v)

Yields below output


# Output
> length(v)
[1] 5
> print(v)
[1] "" "" "" "" ""

4. Empty Character Vector

character() function by default creates an empty vector in R of type character. When no argument is used, it by default takes 0 to length param and creates zero length vector. typeof(character()) returns character type.


# Create Empty Character Vector
v <- character()
print(v)

Yields below output.


# Output
> print(v)
character(0)

5. Convert to Character Vector

If you have a numeric vector, you can easily convert it to a character vector by using as.character() function. as.character() function is used to convert the vector of any type to the character type. This function takes the values of non-character and creates a character vector.


# Convert to Character Cector
v <- as.character(1,2,3)
typeof(v)

Yields below output


# Output
> typeof(v)
[1] "character"

Conclusion

In this article, you have learned how to create a character vector in R by using functions c() and character(). Function character() creates a vector with the specified length of all empty string values whereas c() initializes a vector with the specified values. You can find the complete example from this article at Github R Programming Examples Project.

References

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