Append Operation on Vectors in R Programming

Vectors in R programming is a basic object consisting sequence of homogeneous elements. It can be integer, logical, double, character, complex or raw. In this article, let us discuss different methods to concatenate/append values to a vector in R programming. Values can be appended/concatenated in a vector using 2 methods: 

• c() function
• append() function

Append operation using c() function

c() function is a generic function that combines data into a vector or a list.

Syntax: c(…)
Parameters:
…: represents objects to be concatenated 

To know about more optional parameters, use below command in console: 

help("c")

Example 1:

r

# Create a vector
x <- 1:5
n <- 6:10

# Append using c() function
y <- c(x, n)

# Print resultant vector
print(y)

Output:

 [1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10

Example 2:

r

# Create vector
x <- 1:5
n <- letters[1:5]

# Append
y <- c(x, n)

# Print resultant vector
print(y)

# Print type of resultant vector
typeof(y)

# Print type of other vectors
typeof(x)
typeof(n)

Output:

[1] "1" "2" "3" "4" "5" "a" "b" "c" "d" "e"
[1] "character"
[1] "integer"
[1] "character"

Append operation using append() function

append() function in R is used for merging vectors or adding more elements to a vector.

Syntax: append(x, values)
Parameters:
x: represents a vector to which values has to be appended to 
values: represents the values which has to be appended in the vector 

Example 1:

r

# Create a vector
x <- 1:5

# Append using append() function
x <- append(x, 6:10)

# Print resultant vector
print(x)

Output:

[1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10

Example 2:

r

# Create a vector
x <- 1:5
y <- letters[1:5]

# Append using append() function
x <- append(x, values = y)

# Print resultant vector
print(x)

Output:

[1] "1" "2" "3" "4" "5" "a" "b" "c" "d" "e"