To start, load the package.
This section covers basic logical comparisons and shows how they
might be done in base R
versus using the
extraoperators
package. Many of these are quite simple, but
are defined so that later operators are possible.
First let’s define our “data” as some numbers stored in
sample_numbers
.
Now we can do a series of simple logical comparisons which return a
logical vector of TRUE
or FALSE
.
## base R: greater than 3?
sample_numbers > 3
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE
## base R: greater than or equal to 3?
sample_numbers >= 3
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
## base R: less than 3?
sample_numbers < 3
#> [1] FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
## base R: less than or equal to 3?
sample_numbers <= 3
#> [1] FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE
Unfortunately, we cannot use <
or >
in custom operators, so we use the substitutions: g = >
and l = <
and e = =
. So that
ge = <=
etc.
## extraoperators: greater than 3?
sample_numbers %g% 3
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE
## extraoperators: greater than or equal to 3?
sample_numbers %ge% 3
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE
## extraoperators: less than 3?
sample_numbers %l% 3
#> [1] FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
## extraoperators: less than or equal to 3?
sample_numbers %le% 3
#> [1] FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE
So far there is no real gain in using extraoperators
but
this changes for more complex operations. What if we want to know if our
values fall within some range? This is a fairly common task, such as
saying that valid ages must be between 0 and 100 years.
## base R: greater than 3 and less than 10?
sample_numbers > 3 & sample_numbers < 10
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE
## base R: greater than or equal to 3 and less than 10?
sample_numbers >= 3 & sample_numbers < 10
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE FALSE
## base R: greater than 3 and less than or equal to 10?
sample_numbers > 3 & sample_numbers <= 10
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE FALSE
## base R: greater than or equal to 3 and less than or equal to 10?
sample_numbers >= 3 & sample_numbers <= 10
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE
Base R
accomplishes this through chaining of operations.
extraoperators
has built in range operators.
## extraoperators: greater than 3 and less than 10?
sample_numbers %gl% c(3, 10)
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE
## extraoperators: greater than or equal to 3 and less than 10?
sample_numbers %gel% c(3, 10)
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE FALSE
## extraoperators: greater than 3 and less than or equal to 10?
sample_numbers %gle% c(3, 10)
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE FALSE
## extraoperators: greater than or equal to 3 and less than or equal to 10?
sample_numbers %gele% c(3, 10)
#> [1] TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE
Finally, extraoperators
includes a not in
operator, %!in%
.
## base R: not in 3 or 10
!sample_numbers %in% c(3, 10)
#> [1] TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE
## extraoperators: not in 3 or 10
sample_numbers %!in% c(3, 10)
#> [1] TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE
The next sections show a few examples of these operators augmented by
prefixes: ?
, s
and a
.
Sometimes we want to use a logical comparison and identify indices,
such as to use in a loop. extraoperators
does this by
prefixing operators with ?
for “which”.
## base R: what are the indices that match 3 and 10?
which(sample_numbers %in% c(3, 10))
#> [1] 4 6
## extraoperators: what are the indices that match 3 and 10?
sample_numbers %?in% c(3, 10)
#> [1] 4 6
## base R: what are the indices for numbers between 3 and 10?
which(sample_numbers > 3 & sample_numbers < 10)
#> [1] 1 3 5
## extraoperators: what are the indices for numbers between 3 and 10?
sample_numbers %?gl% c(3, 10)
#> [1] 1 3 5
This can be readily incorporated in other code for further processing.
Another fairly common task is selecting only certain observations.
For example, we might want to calculate the average of numbers within a
plausible range (e.g., excluding outliers). In
extraoperators
subsetting is done by adding an
s
prefix.
## base R: subset to only numbers between 3 and 10
mean(subset(sample_numbers, sample_numbers > 3 & sample_numbers < 10))
#> [1] 6
## or equivalently
mean(sample_numbers[sample_numbers > 3 & sample_numbers < 10])
#> [1] 6
## extraoperators: subset to only numbers between 3 and 10
mean(sample_numbers %sgl% c(3, 10))
#> [1] 6
Subsetting can be especially useful in quick exploratory analyses. Graphs are easily hard to read if there are extreme values. Subsetting makes it fast to “zoom in” on a specific range.
Finally, you might have some quality controls in place for data. For
example asserting that all ages are between 0 and 100. In
extraoperators
this is done by adding the prefix
a
.
## base R: are all numbers between 0 and 10?
all(sample_numbers > 0 & sample_numbers < 10)
#> [1] FALSE
## extraoperators: are all numbers between 0 and 10?
sample_numbers %agl% c(0, 10)
#> [1] FALSE
## extraoperators: are all numbers between 0 and 100?
sample_numbers %agl% c(0, 100)
#> [1] TRUE
If you want to know the opposite, are no numbers between 0 and 100, we can negate the whole operation.
## extraoperators: are NO numbers between 0 and 100?
!sample_numbers %agl% c(0, 100)
#> [1] FALSE
## extraoperators: are NO numbers between 55 and 60?
!sample_numbers %agl% c(55, 60)
#> [1] TRUE
There are also expanded all, subset, and which operators for equals and not equals.
In language, it is fairly natural to make a statement like this: “In
my study, age should be between 18 to 65 and not be missing.” In
R
, the usual implementation of this is more equivalent to:
“In my study, age should be greater than 18 and age should be less than
65 and age should not be missing.” extraoperators
tries to
facilitate something closer to the cleaner original statement using the
chaining operator, %c%
. The chaining operator chains a set
of operations on the right hand side with the argument on its left hand
side passed to each. To accomplish this, the right hand side must be
quoted.
age <- c(19, 30, 90, 50, NA, 45)
age %c% "(> 18 & < 65) & !is.na"
#> [1] TRUE TRUE FALSE TRUE FALSE TRUE
Because the right hand side of the chaining operator is a character
string that is parsed, it is possible to do some special things in it.
is.na
, !is.na
, is.nan
, and
!is.nan
are special characters that do not require any
further value to work correctly. As shown, parentheses also work, which
allows fine grained control over exactly what is intended. For example
if we expect only adults are in the study, but those who refused to
report their age were coded -9 and people who failed to complete the
questionnaire at all are missing.
age <- c(19, 30, 90, 50, NA, 16, -9)
age %c% "(> 18 | == -9) & !is.na"
#> [1] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE FALSE TRUE
As with all operators, there are prefixes for all, subset, and which.
In math, interval notation often is used. For example, we might
write: x∈(1,5)∪[6,∞) to indicate that x is between the intervals 1
to 5 (not including 1 or 5) or between 6 and positive infinity,
including 6 but not positive infinity. The interval notation operator,
%e%
let’s you use fairly similar language in
R
. “|” is the union operator and “&” is the intersect
operator. Variables are allowed but no functions as these cannot be
parsed.
Sometimes you want to pattern match. For example, you might want to
find all variable names that match a certain pattern. The
%grepl% operator can help here, built off
R's
grepl`
function.
## sample dataset
data <- data.frame(
ID = c(1, 2, 3),
cesd_1 = c(4, 5, 6),
cesd_2 = c(7, 8, 9),
cesd_total = c(11, 13, 15)
)
## find all variables that start with "cesd"
names(data)[grepl("^cesd", names(data))]
#> [1] "cesd_1" "cesd_2" "cesd_total"
## and the less typing version using operators
names(data) %sgrepl% "^cesd"
#> [1] "cesd_1" "cesd_2" "cesd_total"