[R] how to remove the empty element in the vector

[Marc Schwartz]

On Thu, 2006-10-19 at 12:23 -0700, Yanqin Yang wrote:
> Hello,
>    
>   Would anyone kindly tell me how to remove the empty element in the vector object?
>   For example, 
>   > x
> [1] "a" ""  ""  "c" "c" "c" "d"
> > unique(x)
> [1] "a" ""  "c" "d"
> How could I get the output like: "a","c","d"? 
>    
>   Thanks,
>    
>   Yanqin


It depends upon what you mean by removing the empty elements.

If you want to just get the set of values that are not "":

> x[x != ""]
[1] "a" "c" "c" "c" "d"


If you want the output exactly as you have it above, which is
eliminating the repeated values:

> unique(x[x != ""])
[1] "a" "c" "d"


See ?Extract, ?Comparison and ?Syntax for more information.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz