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Subsetting Data in R

What is subsetting?

Subsetting is the selection or extraction of specific parts of larger data. We can subset on various kinds of data objects: vectors, lists, and data frames.

Subsetting operators

There are three subsetting operators: [, [[ and $.

[[ is similar to [, except it can only return a single value and it allows you to pull elements out of a list.

$ is a useful shorthand for [[ combined with character subsetting.

You need [[ when working with lists. This is because when [ is applied to a list, it always returns a list; it never gives you the contents of the list.

The following are the examples of subsetting of various R objects:

1. Vectors

x <- c(2.1, 4.2, 3.3, 5.4)
x[c(3, 1)]      # Subsetting using positive integers: return elements at the specified positions.
## [1] 3.3 2.1

x[-c(3, 1)]     # Subsetting using positive integers: return elements at the specified positions.
## [1] 4.2 5.4

x[c(TRUE, TRUE, FALSE, FALSE)]  # # Subsetting using logical vectors.
## [1] 2.1 4.2

2. Lists

a <- matrix(1:9, nrow = 3)
colnames(a) <- c("A", "B", "C")
a[1:2, ]

##      A B C
## [1,] 1 4 7
## [2,] 2 5 8

3. Data Frames

df <- data.frame(x = 1:3, y = 3:1, z = letters[1:3])

df[df$x == 2, ]
##   x y z
## 2 2 2 b

df[c(1, 3), ]
##   x y z
## 1 1 3 a
## 3 3 1 c

To get contents of a list use [[ or $ operator like:

sample_list <- list(char = "List-in-R", num = c(1:9), bool = TRUE)
sample_list[[1]]
## [1] "List-in-R"

sample_list[["num"]]
## [1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

sample_list$bool 
## [1] TRUE

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