Data Structures in R


February 3, 2022, Learn eTutorial
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Like in all other programming languages data structure is a fundamental concept in R.A data structure is a collection of data that are composed of similar or different basic data types like numeric, Boolean, complex, etc.

In R the following are the different types of data structures:

  1. Vector
  2. List
  3. Array
  4. Matrix
  5. Data frame
  6. Factors
R Data Structure

1. Vector Data Structure in R

In R a vector is a basic data structure and is homogeneous in nature. The term homogeneous defines a vector holding only data elements of the same data type. In other words, a vector is a data structure that stores a sequence of data elements of the same basic data types.

R Data Structure

In our next tutorial, You will learn how to create a vector, different data manipulation techniques and functions used to examine a vector and some more. Learn More

2. List Data Structure in R

The list is a data structure of generic vectors containing heterogeneous data type elements. In simple words, a list is an object which contains elements of different data types like characters, numerical, logical, vectors, etc. A list is one-dimensional with an ordered collection of different (heterogeneous) data type elements.

R Data Structure

In the Our upcoming List Tutorial, You will learn How to create a list, the functions supported by the list, etc.

3. Arrays

An array is a data structure that holds an ordered collection of R objects indexed by contiguous integers. The R objects are composed of the atomic basic data types (link to basic data type tutorial) like character, complex, logical, etc. 

 

  Data Structure Description
1 Vector A vector is a basic data structure in R that consists of a collection of data elements composed of similar basic data types.
2 List A list in R is a data structure where the data elements are composed of different data types.
3 Arrays An array is a data structure where data elements are stored in multi-dimensional rows and columns.
4 Matrix A matrix is a data structure where the data elements are arranged in rows and columns and belong to the same data type. They are two-dimensional arrays.
5 Data frame A data frame is a data structure to store data in table form where each column contains values of one variable and each row contains one set of values from each column.
6 Factors In R, factors are data structures to store categorical data.
R Data Structure

NOTE : A data type is used to assign a single value to a variable like a =TRUE , B =12L ,c = “R” etc .In case of data structure it holds a collection of data or values composed of these basic data types like c(4 ,6 ,8) , list(c(2,9,3),21.3,sin)etc

In our upcoming tutorials, you will learn more about these data structures in detail.