R: How to slice a window of elements in named vector - r

Question

Given the following named vector:
x <- c(54, 36, 67, 25, 76)
names(x) <- c('a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e')
How one can extract the elements between 'b' and 'd'? I can do that for data tables with the dplyr::select(dt, b:d) but for some reason, I cannot find a solution for named vectors (all the examples I find are for extracting element(s) by giving all the names not a range of names)...

Answer 1

You could do
x[which(names(x) == "b"):which(names(x) == "d")]
#> b c d
#> 36 67 25
The problem being that there is no guarantee in a named vector that names are unique, and if there are duplicate names the entire concept becomes meaningless.
If you wanted a complete solution that allows for tidyverse-style non-standard evaluation and sensible error messages you could have
subset_named <- function(data, exp)
{
if(missing(exp)) return(data)
exp <- as.list(match.call())$exp
if(is.numeric(exp)) return(data[exp])
if(is.character(exp)) return(data[exp])
tryCatch({
ss <- suppressWarnings(eval(exp))
return(data[ss])},
error = function(e)
{
if(as.character(exp[[1]]) != ":")
stop("`exp` must be a sequence created by ':'")
n <- names(data)
first <- as.character(exp[[2]])
second <- as.character(exp[[3]])
first_match <- which(n == first)
second_match <- which(n == second)
if(length(first_match) == 0)
stop("\"", first, "\" not found in names(",
deparse(substitute(data)), ")")
if(length(second_match) == 0)
stop("\"", second, "\" not found in names(",
deparse(substitute(data)), ")")
if(length(first_match) > 1) {
warning("\"", first,
"\" found more than once. Using first occurence only")
first_match <- first_match[1]
}
if(length(second_match) > 1) {
warning("\"", second,
"\" found more than once. Using first occurence only")
second_match <- second_match[1]
}
return(data[first_match:second_match])
})
}
That allows the following behaviour:
subset_named(x, "b":"d")
#> b c d
#> 36 67 25
subset_named(x, b:d)
#> b c d
#> 36 67 25
subset_named(x, 1:3)
#> a b c
#> 54 36 67
subset_named(x, "e")
#> e
#> 76
subset_named(x)
#> a b c d e
#> 54 36 67 25 76

Answer 2

One option could be:
x[Reduce(`:`, which(names(x) %in% c("b", "d")))]
b c d
36 67 25

Answer 3

You can use match in base R :
x[match('b', names(x)):match('d', names(x))]
# b c d
#36 67 25
Or if you want to use something like b:d convert it into dataframe as column
library(dplyr)
t(x) %>%
as.data.frame() %>%
select(b:d)

Answer 4

1) subset In base R this can be done using the select argument of subset. The only catch is that only the data.frame method of subset supports the select argument but we can convert x to a data.frame and then convert back. It also allows more complex specifications such as c(b:d, d) .
unlist(subset(data.frame(as.list(x)), select = b:d))
## b c d
## 36 67 25
2) evalq Another base R possibility is to create a list with the values 1, 2, 3, ... and the same names as x and then evaluate b:d with respect to it giving the desired indexes which can then be indexed into x. This also allows complex specifications as in (1).
x[ evalq(b:d, setNames(as.list(seq_along(x)), names(x))) ]
## b c d
## 36 67 25
We could turn this into a function like this:
sel <- function(x, select, envir = parent.frame()) {
ix <- setNames(as.list(seq_along(x)), names(x))
x[ eval(substitute(select), ix, envir) ]
}
sel(x, b:d)
sel(x, c(b:c, d))
sel(x, d:b) # reverse order
3) logical condition Again with only base R, if the names are in sorted order, as in the question, then we can check for names between the endpoints:
x[names(x) >= "b" & names(x) <= "d"]
## b c d
## 36 67 25
4) zoo If the names are in ascending order, as in the question, we could create a zoo series with those names as the times and then use window.zoo to pick out the subseries and finally convert back.
library(zoo)
coredata(window(zoo(x, names(x)), start = "b", end = "d"))
## b c d
## 36 67 25