I am relatively new to R, and matrix-based scripting languages in general. I have written this function to return the index's of each row which has a content similar to any another row's content. It is a primitive form of spam reduction that I am developing.
if (!require("RecordLinkage")) install.packages("RecordLinkage")
library("RecordLinkage")
# Takes a column of strings, returns a list of index's
check_similarity <- function(x) {
threshold <- 0.8
values <- NULL
for(i in 1:length(x)) {
values <- c(values, which(jarowinkler(x[i], x[-i]) > threshold))
}
return(values)
}
is there a way that I could write this to avoid the for loop entirely?
We can simplify the code somewhat using sapply.
# some test data #
x = c('hello', 'hollow', 'cat', 'turtle', 'bottle', 'xxx')
# create an x by x matrix specifying which strings are alike
m = sapply(x, jarowinkler, x) > threshold
# set diagonal to FALSE: we're not interested in strings being identical to themselves
diag(m) = FALSE
# And find index positions of all strings that are similar to at least one other string
which(rowSums(m) > 0)
# [1] 1 2 4 5
I.e. this returns the index positions of 'hello', 'hollow', 'turtle', and 'bottle' as being similar to another string
If you prefer, you can use colSums instead of rowSums to get a named vector, but this could be messy if the strings are long:
which(colSums(m) > 0)
# hello hollow turtle bottle
# 1 2 4 5
I'm trying to move some Fortran code to R for finite differences related to chemical kinetics.
Sample Fortran loop:
DOUBLE PRECISION, DIMENSION (2000,2) :: data=0.0
DOUBLE PRECISION :: k1=5.0, k2=20.0, dt=0.0005
DO i=2, 2000
data(i,1) = data(i-1,1) + data(i-1,1)*(-k1)*dt
data(i,2) = data(i-1,2) + ( data(i-1,1)*k1*dt - data(i-1,2)*k2*dt )
...
END DO
The analogous R code:
k1=5
k2=20
dt=0.0005
data=data.frame(cbind(c(500,rep(0,1999)),rep(0,2000)))
a.fun=function(y){
y2=y-k1*y*dt
return(y2)
}
apply(data,2,a.fun)
This overwrites my first value in the dataframe and leaves zeros elsewhere. I'd like to run this vectorized and not using a for loop since they are so slow in R. Also, my function only calculates the first column so far. I can't get the second column working until I get the syntax right on the first.
Its not necessarily true that R is bad at loops. It very much depends on what you are doing. Using k1, k2, dt and data from the question (i.e. the four lines beginning with k1=5) and formulating the problem in terms of an iterated matrix, the loop in the last line below returns nearly instantaneously on my PC:
z <- as.matrix(data)
m <- matrix(c(1-k1*dt, k1*dt, 0, 1-k2*dt), 2)
for(i in 2:nrow(z)) z[i, ] <- m %*% z[i-1, ]
(You could also try storing the vectors in columns of z rather than rows since R stores matrices by column.)
Here is the first bit of the result:
> head(z)
X1 X2
[1,] 500.0000 0.000000
[2,] 498.7500 1.250000
[3,] 497.5031 2.484375
[4,] 496.2594 3.703289
[5,] 495.0187 4.906905
[6,] 493.7812 6.095382
May be this can help.
I think you need to have the initial condition for data[1,2]. I assumed both data[1,1] as 500 and data[1,2 as 0 at the initial condition.
The code goes like this:
> ## Define two vectors x and y
> x <- seq(from=0,length=2000,by=0)
> y <- seq(from=0,length=2000,by=0)
>
> ## Constants
> k1 = 5.0
> dt = 0.0005
> k2 = 20.0
>
> ## Initialize x[1]=500 and y[1]=0
> x[1]=500
> y[1] = 0
>
> for (i in 2:2000){
+ x[i]=x[i-1]+x[i-1]*-k1*dt
+ y[i] = y[i-1]+x[i-1]*k1*dt-y[i-1]*k2*dt
+ }
>
> finaldata <- data.frame(x,y)
> head(finaldata)
x y
1 500.0000 0.000000
2 498.7500 1.250000
3 497.5031 2.484375
4 496.2594 3.703289
5 495.0187 4.906905
6 493.7812 6.095382
I hope this helps.
In R, what is the most efficient/idiomatic way to count the number of TRUE values in a logical vector? I can think of two ways:
z <- sample(c(TRUE, FALSE), 1000, rep = TRUE)
sum(z)
# [1] 498
table(z)["TRUE"]
# TRUE
# 498
Which do you prefer? Is there anything even better?
The safest way is to use sum with na.rm = TRUE:
sum(z, na.rm = TRUE) # best way to count TRUE values
which gives 1.
There are some problems with other solutions when logical vector contains NA values.
See for example:
z <- c(TRUE, FALSE, NA)
sum(z) # gives you NA
table(z)["TRUE"] # gives you 1
length(z[z == TRUE]) # f3lix answer, gives you 2 (because NA indexing returns values)
Additionally table solution is less efficient (look at the code of table function).
Also, you should be careful with the "table" solution, in case there are no TRUE values in the logical vector. See for example:
z <- c(FALSE, FALSE)
table(z)["TRUE"] # gives you `NA`
or
z <- c(NA, FALSE)
table(z)["TRUE"] # gives you `NA`
Another option which hasn't been mentioned is to use which:
length(which(z))
Just to actually provide some context on the "which is faster question", it's always easiest just to test yourself. I made the vector much larger for comparison:
z <- sample(c(TRUE,FALSE),1000000,rep=TRUE)
system.time(sum(z))
user system elapsed
0.03 0.00 0.03
system.time(length(z[z==TRUE]))
user system elapsed
0.75 0.07 0.83
system.time(length(which(z)))
user system elapsed
1.34 0.28 1.64
system.time(table(z)["TRUE"])
user system elapsed
10.62 0.52 11.19
So clearly using sum is the best approach in this case. You may also want to check for NA values as Marek suggested.
Just to add a note regarding NA values and the which function:
> which(c(T, F, NA, NULL, T, F))
[1] 1 4
> which(!c(T, F, NA, NULL, T, F))
[1] 2 5
Note that which only checks for logical TRUE, so it essentially ignores non-logical values.
Another way is
> length(z[z==TRUE])
[1] 498
While sum(z) is nice and short, for me length(z[z==TRUE]) is more self explaining. Though, I think with a simple task like this it does not really make a difference...
If it is a large vector, you probably should go with the fastest solution, which is sum(z). length(z[z==TRUE]) is about 10x slower and table(z)[TRUE] is about 200x slower than sum(z).
Summing up, sum(z) is the fastest to type and to execute.
Another option is to use summary function. It gives a summary of the Ts, Fs and NAs.
> summary(hival)
Mode FALSE TRUE NA's
logical 4367 53 2076
>
which is good alternative, especially when you operate on matrices (check ?which and notice the arr.ind argument). But I suggest that you stick with sum, because of na.rm argument that can handle NA's in logical vector.
For instance:
# create dummy variable
set.seed(100)
x <- round(runif(100, 0, 1))
x <- x == 1
# create NA's
x[seq(1, length(x), 7)] <- NA
If you type in sum(x) you'll get NA as a result, but if you pass na.rm = TRUE in sum function, you'll get the result that you want.
> sum(x)
[1] NA
> sum(x, na.rm=TRUE)
[1] 43
Is your question strictly theoretical, or you have some practical problem concerning logical vectors?
There's also a package called bit that is specifically designed for fast boolean operations. It's especially useful if you have large vectors or need to do many boolean operations.
z <- sample(c(TRUE, FALSE), 1e8, rep = TRUE)
system.time({
sum(z) # 0.170s
})
system.time({
bit::sum.bit(z) # 0.021s, ~10x improvement in speed
})
I've been doing something similar a few weeks ago. Here's a possible solution, it's written from scratch, so it's kind of beta-release or something like that. I'll try to improve it by removing loops from code...
The main idea is to write a function that will take 2 (or 3) arguments. First one is a data.frame which holds the data gathered from questionnaire, and the second one is a numeric vector with correct answers (this is only applicable for single choice questionnaire). Alternatively, you can add third argument that will return numeric vector with final score, or data.frame with embedded score.
fscore <- function(x, sol, output = 'numeric') {
if (ncol(x) != length(sol)) {
stop('Number of items differs from length of correct answers!')
} else {
inc <- matrix(ncol=ncol(x), nrow=nrow(x))
for (i in 1:ncol(x)) {
inc[,i] <- x[,i] == sol[i]
}
if (output == 'numeric') {
res <- rowSums(inc)
} else if (output == 'data.frame') {
res <- data.frame(x, result = rowSums(inc))
} else {
stop('Type not supported!')
}
}
return(res)
}
I'll try to do this in a more elegant manner with some *ply function. Notice that I didn't put na.rm argument... Will do that
# create dummy data frame - values from 1 to 5
set.seed(100)
d <- as.data.frame(matrix(round(runif(200,1,5)), 10))
# create solution vector
sol <- round(runif(20, 1, 5))
Now apply a function:
> fscore(d, sol)
[1] 6 4 2 4 4 3 3 6 2 6
If you pass data.frame argument, it will return modified data.frame.
I'll try to fix this one... Hope it helps!
I've just had a particular problem where I had to count the number of true statements from a logical vector and this worked best for me...
length(grep(TRUE, (gene.rep.matrix[i,1:6] > 1))) > 5
So This takes a subset of the gene.rep.matrix object, and applies a logical test, returning a logical vector. This vector is put as an argument to grep, which returns the locations of any TRUE entries. Length then calculates how many entries grep finds, thus giving the number of TRUE entries.
Still trying to get into the R logic... what is the "best" way to unpack (on LHS) the results from a function returning multiple values?
I can't do this apparently:
R> functionReturningTwoValues <- function() { return(c(1, 2)) }
R> functionReturningTwoValues()
[1] 1 2
R> a, b <- functionReturningTwoValues()
Error: unexpected ',' in "a,"
R> c(a, b) <- functionReturningTwoValues()
Error in c(a, b) <- functionReturningTwoValues() : object 'a' not found
must I really do the following?
R> r <- functionReturningTwoValues()
R> a <- r[1]; b <- r[2]
or would the R programmer write something more like this:
R> functionReturningTwoValues <- function() {return(list(first=1, second=2))}
R> r <- functionReturningTwoValues()
R> r$first
[1] 1
R> r$second
[1] 2
--- edited to answer Shane's questions ---
I don't really need giving names to the result value parts. I am applying one aggregate function to the first component and an other to the second component (min and max. if it was the same function for both components I would not need splitting them).
(1) list[...]<- I had posted this over a decade ago on r-help. Since then it has been added to the gsubfn package. It does not require a special operator but does require that the left hand side be written using list[...] like this:
library(gsubfn) # need 0.7-0 or later
list[a, b] <- functionReturningTwoValues()
If you only need the first or second component these all work too:
list[a] <- functionReturningTwoValues()
list[a, ] <- functionReturningTwoValues()
list[, b] <- functionReturningTwoValues()
(Of course, if you only needed one value then functionReturningTwoValues()[[1]] or functionReturningTwoValues()[[2]] would be sufficient.)
See the cited r-help thread for more examples.
(2) with If the intent is merely to combine the multiple values subsequently and the return values are named then a simple alternative is to use with :
myfun <- function() list(a = 1, b = 2)
list[a, b] <- myfun()
a + b
# same
with(myfun(), a + b)
(3) attach Another alternative is attach:
attach(myfun())
a + b
ADDED: with and attach
I somehow stumbled on this clever hack on the internet ... I'm not sure if it's nasty or beautiful, but it lets you create a "magical" operator that allows you to unpack multiple return values into their own variable. The := function is defined here, and included below for posterity:
':=' <- function(lhs, rhs) {
frame <- parent.frame()
lhs <- as.list(substitute(lhs))
if (length(lhs) > 1)
lhs <- lhs[-1]
if (length(lhs) == 1) {
do.call(`=`, list(lhs[[1]], rhs), envir=frame)
return(invisible(NULL))
}
if (is.function(rhs) || is(rhs, 'formula'))
rhs <- list(rhs)
if (length(lhs) > length(rhs))
rhs <- c(rhs, rep(list(NULL), length(lhs) - length(rhs)))
for (i in 1:length(lhs))
do.call(`=`, list(lhs[[i]], rhs[[i]]), envir=frame)
return(invisible(NULL))
}
With that in hand, you can do what you're after:
functionReturningTwoValues <- function() {
return(list(1, matrix(0, 2, 2)))
}
c(a, b) := functionReturningTwoValues()
a
#[1] 1
b
# [,1] [,2]
# [1,] 0 0
# [2,] 0 0
I don't know how I feel about that. Perhaps you might find it helpful in your interactive workspace. Using it to build (re-)usable libraries (for mass consumption) might not be the best idea, but I guess that's up to you.
... you know what they say about responsibility and power ...
Usually I wrap the output into a list, which is very flexible (you can have any combination of numbers, strings, vectors, matrices, arrays, lists, objects int he output)
so like:
func2<-function(input) {
a<-input+1
b<-input+2
output<-list(a,b)
return(output)
}
output<-func2(5)
for (i in output) {
print(i)
}
[1] 6
[1] 7
I put together an R package zeallot to tackle this problem. zeallot includes a multiple assignment or unpacking assignment operator, %<-%. The LHS of the operator is any number of variables to assign, built using calls to c(). The RHS of the operator is a vector, list, data frame, date object, or any custom object with an implemented destructure method (see ?zeallot::destructure).
Here are a handful of examples based on the original post,
library(zeallot)
functionReturningTwoValues <- function() {
return(c(1, 2))
}
c(a, b) %<-% functionReturningTwoValues()
a # 1
b # 2
functionReturningListOfValues <- function() {
return(list(1, 2, 3))
}
c(d, e, f) %<-% functionReturningListOfValues()
d # 1
e # 2
f # 3
functionReturningNestedList <- function() {
return(list(1, list(2, 3)))
}
c(f, c(g, h)) %<-% functionReturningNestedList()
f # 1
g # 2
h # 3
functionReturningTooManyValues <- function() {
return(as.list(1:20))
}
c(i, j, ...rest) %<-% functionReturningTooManyValues()
i # 1
j # 2
rest # list(3, 4, 5, ..)
Check out the package vignette for more information and examples.
functionReturningTwoValues <- function() {
results <- list()
results$first <- 1
results$second <-2
return(results)
}
a <- functionReturningTwoValues()
I think this works.
There's no right answer to this question. I really depends on what you're doing with the data. In the simple example above, I would strongly suggest:
Keep things as simple as possible.
Wherever possible, it's a best practice to keep your functions vectorized. That provides the greatest amount of flexibility and speed in the long run.
Is it important that the values 1 and 2 above have names? In other words, why is it important in this example that 1 and 2 be named a and b, rather than just r[1] and r[2]? One important thing to understand in this context is that a and b are also both vectors of length 1. So you're not really changing anything in the process of making that assignment, other than having 2 new vectors that don't need subscripts to be referenced:
> r <- c(1,2)
> a <- r[1]
> b <- r[2]
> class(r)
[1] "numeric"
> class(a)
[1] "numeric"
> a
[1] 1
> a[1]
[1] 1
You can also assign the names to the original vector if you would rather reference the letter than the index:
> names(r) <- c("a","b")
> names(r)
[1] "a" "b"
> r["a"]
a
1
[Edit] Given that you will be applying min and max to each vector separately, I would suggest either using a matrix (if a and b will be the same length and the same data type) or data frame (if a and b will be the same length but can be different data types) or else use a list like in your last example (if they can be of differing lengths and data types).
> r <- data.frame(a=1:4, b=5:8)
> r
a b
1 1 5
2 2 6
3 3 7
4 4 8
> min(r$a)
[1] 1
> max(r$b)
[1] 8
If you want to return the output of your function to the Global Environment, you can use list2env, like in this example:
myfun <- function(x) { a <- 1:x
b <- 5:x
df <- data.frame(a=a, b=b)
newList <- list("my_obj1" = a, "my_obj2" = b, "myDF"=df)
list2env(newList ,.GlobalEnv)
}
myfun(3)
This function will create three objects in your Global Environment:
> my_obj1
[1] 1 2 3
> my_obj2
[1] 5 4 3
> myDF
a b
1 1 5
2 2 4
3 3 3
Lists seem perfect for this purpose. For example within the function you would have
x = desired_return_value_1 # (vector, matrix, etc)
y = desired_return_value_2 # (vector, matrix, etc)
returnlist = list(x,y...)
} # end of function
main program
x = returnlist[[1]]
y = returnlist[[2]]
Yes to your second and third questions -- that's what you need to do as you cannot have multiple 'lvalues' on the left of an assignment.
How about using assign?
functionReturningTwoValues <- function(a, b) {
assign(a, 1, pos=1)
assign(b, 2, pos=1)
}
You can pass the names of the variable you want to be passed by reference.
> functionReturningTwoValues('a', 'b')
> a
[1] 1
> b
[1] 2
If you need to access the existing values, the converse of assign is get.
[A]
If each of foo and bar is a single number, then there's nothing wrong with c(foo,bar); and you can also name the components: c(Foo=foo,Bar=bar). So you could access the components of the result 'res' as res[1], res[2]; or, in the named case, as res["Foo"], res["BAR"].
[B]
If foo and bar are vectors of the same type and length, then again there's nothing wrong with returning cbind(foo,bar) or rbind(foo,bar); likewise nameable. In the 'cbind' case, you would access foo and bar as res[,1], res[,2] or as res[,"Foo"], res[,"Bar"]. You might also prefer to return a dataframe rather than a matrix:
data.frame(Foo=foo,Bar=bar)
and access them as res$Foo, res$Bar. This would also work well if foo and bar were of the same length but not of the same type (e.g. foo is a vector of numbers, bar a vector of character strings).
[C]
If foo and bar are sufficiently different not to combine conveniently as above, then you shuld definitely return a list.
For example, your function might fit a linear model and
also calculate predicted values, so you could have
LM<-lm(....) ; foo<-summary(LM); bar<-LM$fit
and then you would return list(Foo=foo,Bar=bar) and then access the summary as res$Foo, the predicted values as res$Bar
source: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/How-to-return-multiple-values-in-a-function-td858528.html
Year 2021 and this is something I frequently use.
tidyverse package has a function called lst that assigns name to the list elements when creating the list.
Post which I use list2env() to assign variable or use the list directly
library(tidyverse)
fun <- function(){
a<-1
b<-2
lst(a,b)
}
list2env(fun(), envir=.GlobalEnv)#unpacks list key-values to variable-values into the current environment
This is only for the sake of completeness and not because I personally prefer it. You can pipe %>% the result, evaluate it with curly braces {} and write variables to the parent environment using double-arrow <<-.
library(tidyverse)
functionReturningTwoValues() %>% {a <<- .[1]; b <<- .[2]}
UPDATE:
Your can also use the multiple assignment operator from the zeallot package:: %<-%
c(a, b) %<-% list(0, 1)
I will post a function that returns multiple objects by way of vectors:
Median <- function(X){
X_Sort <- sort(X)
if (length(X)%%2==0){
Median <- (X_Sort[(length(X)/2)]+X_Sort[(length(X)/2)+1])/2
} else{
Median <- X_Sort[(length(X)+1)/2]
}
return(Median)
}
That was a function I created to calculate the median. I know that there's an inbuilt function in R called median() but nonetheless I programmed it to build other function to calculate the quartiles of a numeric data-set by using the Median() function I just programmed. The Median() function works like this:
If a numeric vector X has an even number of elements (i.e., length(X)%%2==0), the median is calculated by averaging the elements sort(X)[length(X)/2] and sort(X)[(length(X)/2+1)].
If Xdoesn't have an even number of elements, the median is sort(X)[(length(X)+1)/2].
On to the QuartilesFunction():
QuartilesFunction <- function(X){
X_Sort <- sort(X) # Data is sorted in ascending order
if (length(X)%%2==0){
# Data number is even
HalfDN <- X_Sort[1:(length(X)/2)]
HalfUP <- X_Sort[((length(X)/2)+1):length(X)]
QL <- Median(HalfDN)
QU <- Median(HalfUP)
QL1 <- QL
QL2 <- QL
QU1 <- QU
QU2 <- QU
QL3 <- QL
QU3 <- QU
Quartiles <- c(QL1,QU1,QL2,QU2,QL3,QU3)
names(Quartiles) = c("QL (1)", "QU (1)", "QL (2)", "QU (2)","QL (3)", "QU (3)")
} else{ # Data number is odd
# Including the median
Half1DN <- X_Sort[1:((length(X)+1)/2)]
Half1UP <- X_Sort[(((length(X)+1)/2)):length(X)]
QL1 <- Median(Half1DN)
QU1 <- Median(Half1UP)
# Not including the median
Half2DN <- X_Sort[1:(((length(X)+1)/2)-1)]
Half2UP <- X_Sort[(((length(X)+1)/2)+1):length(X)]
QL2 <- Median(Half2DN)
QU2 <- Median(Half2UP)
# Methods (1) and (2) averaged
QL3 <- (QL1+QL2)/2
QU3 <- (QU1+QU2)/2
Quartiles <- c(QL1,QU1,QL2,QU2,QL3,QU3)
names(Quartiles) = c("QL (1)", "QU (1)", "QL (2)", "QU (2)","QL (3)", "QU (3)")
}
return(Quartiles)
}
This function returns the quartiles of a numeric vector by using three methods:
Discarding the median for the calculation of the quartiles when the number of elements of the numeric vector Xis odd.
Keeping the median for the calculation of the quartiles when the number of elements of the numeric vector Xis odd.
Averaging the results obtained by using methods 1 and 2.
When the number of elements in the numeric vector X is even, the three methods coincide.
The result of the QuartilesFunction() is a vector that depicts the first and third quartiles calculated by using the three methods outlined.
With R 3.6.1, I can do the following
fr2v <- function() { c(5,3) }
a_b <- fr2v()
(a_b[[1]]) # prints "5"
(a_b[[2]]) # prints "3"
To obtain multiple outputs from a function and keep them in the desired format you can save the outputs to your hard disk (in the working directory) from within the function and then load them from outside the function:
myfun <- function(x) {
df1 <- ...
df2 <- ...
save(df1, file = "myfile1")
save(df2, file = "myfile2")
}
load("myfile1")
load("myfile2")