Replace Blank by NA in R DataFrame

In this article, we are going to see how to replace Blank space with NA in dataframe in R Programming Language.

Example 1: R program to replace blank by NA in dataframe

We will replace the empty cells using a logical condition based on the “==” operator.

Syntax:

dataframe[dataframe == “”] <- NA

R

# create a dataframe with 4 rows and 2 columns
data = data.frame(col1 = c(1, 2, 3, ""),
                  col2 = c("", 4, 5, ""))

# store actual dataframe in final
final = data

# replace blank with NA
final[final == ""] <- NA

# display final dataframe
print(final)

Output:

  col1 col2
1    1 <NA>
2    2    4
3    3    5
4 <NA> <NA>

Example 2: R program to replace blank and space by NA in dataframe

R

# create a dataframe with 4 rows and 2 columns
data = data.frame(col1 = c(1, 2, 3, " "),
                  col2 = c(" ", 4, 5, " "))

# store actual dataframe in final
final = data

# replace blank and space with NA
final[final == " "] <- NA

# display final dataframe
print(final)

Output:

  col1 col2
1    1 <NA>
2    2    4
3    3    5
4 <NA> <NA>

Example 3: R program to replace blank and blank spaces with NA

If we want to replace both blank and blank space then we can use both the conditions separated by | operator

Syntax:

dataframe[dataframe==”” | dataframe == ” “] <- NA

R

# create a dataframe with 4 rows and 2 columns
data = data.frame(col1 =c (1, 2, 3, ""),
                  col2 = c("", 4, " ", " "))

# store actual dataframe in final
final = data

# replace blank and blank space with NA
final[final == ""  | final== " "] <- NA

# display final dataframe
print(final)

Output:

  col1 col2
1    1 <NA>
2    2    4
3    3 <NA>
4 <NA> <NA>