IRanges (version 2.6.0)

IRanges-class: IRanges and NormalIRanges objects

Description

The IRanges class is a simple implementation of the Ranges container where 2 integer vectors of the same length are used to store the start and width values. See the Ranges virtual class for a formal definition of Ranges objects and for their methods (all of them should work for IRanges objects).

Some subclasses of the IRanges class are: NormalIRanges, Views, etc...

A NormalIRanges object is just an IRanges object that is guaranteed to be "normal". See the Normality section in the man page for Ranges objects for the definition and properties of "normal" Ranges objects.

Constructor

See ?`IRanges-constructor`.

See Also

Ranges-class,

IRanges-constructor, IRanges-utils,

intra-range-methods for intra range transformations,

inter-range-methods for inter range transformations,

setops-methods

Examples

showClass("IRanges")  # shows (some of) the known subclasses

## ---------------------------------------------------------------------
## A. MANIPULATING IRanges OBJECTS
## ---------------------------------------------------------------------
## All the methods defined for Ranges objects work on IRanges objects.
## See ?Ranges for some examples.
## Also see ?`IRanges-utils` and ?`setops-methods` for additional
## operations on IRanges objects.
  
## Combining IRanges objects
ir1 <- IRanges(c(1, 10, 20), width=5)
mcols(ir1) <- DataFrame(score=runif(3))
ir2 <- IRanges(c(101, 110, 120), width=10)
mcols(ir2) <- DataFrame(score=runif(3))
ir3 <- IRanges(c(1001, 1010, 1020), width=20)
mcols(ir3) <- DataFrame(value=runif(3))
some.iranges <- c(ir1, ir2)
## all.iranges <- c(ir1, ir2, ir3) ## This will raise an error
all.iranges <- c(ir1, ir2, ir3, ignore.mcols=TRUE)
stopifnot(is.null(mcols(all.iranges)))

## ---------------------------------------------------------------------
## B. A NOTE ABOUT PERFORMANCE
## ---------------------------------------------------------------------
## Using an IRanges object for storing a big set of ranges is more
## efficient than using a standard R data frame:
N <- 2000000L  # nb of ranges
W <- 180L      # width of each range
start <- 1L
end <- 50000000L
set.seed(777)
range_starts <- sort(sample(end-W+1L, N))
range_widths <- rep.int(W, N)
## Instantiation is faster
system.time(x <- IRanges(start=range_starts, width=range_widths))
system.time(y <- data.frame(start=range_starts, width=range_widths))
## Subsetting is faster
system.time(x16 <- x[c(TRUE, rep.int(FALSE, 15))])
system.time(y16 <- y[c(TRUE, rep.int(FALSE, 15)), ])
## Internal representation is more compact
object.size(x16)
object.size(y16)