R help - Jul 2002 - confused with vector subsetting

Dear all,

I do not know whether the following results from an obscure feature
of R or from my misunderstanding.
> x <- 1:3
> x[-which(x == 2)]
[1] 1 3
> x[-which(x == 4)]
numeric(0)
(I would have expected something like '[1] 1 2 3' at that point)

Thanks in advance for any advice.


Laurent

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On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Laurent Gautier wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I do not know whether the following results from an obscure feature
> of R or from my misunderstanding.
>
> > x <- 1:3
> > x[-which(x == 2)]
> [1] 1 3
> > x[-which(x == 4)]
> numeric(0)
> (I would have expected something like '[1] 1 2 3' at that point)
>
It's a pity that this doesn't work, but it can't.

Since which(x==4) is numeric(0), -which(x==4) is also numeric(0), so R
can't possibly distinguish between
	x[-which(x == 4)]
	x[ which(x == 4)]
so they can't both do what you would like

If you don't know whether 4 will appear in x you need to do
	x[!(x==4)]
or preferably
	x[!(x %in% 4)]
which will work even if x contains NAs.


	-thomas

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