match returns a vector of the positions of (first) matches of
its first argument in its second.
%in% is a more intuitive interface as a binary operator,
which returns a logical vector indicating if there is a match or not
for its left operand.
match(x, table, nomatch = NA_integer_, incomparables = NULL)x %in% table
vector or NULL: the values to be matched.
Long vectors are supported.
vector or NULL: the values to be matched against.
Long vectors are not supported.
the value to be returned in the case when no match is
found. Note that it is coerced to integer.
a vector of values that cannot be matched. Any
value in x matching a value in this vector is assigned the
nomatch value. For historical reasons, FALSE is
equivalent to NULL.
A vector of the same length as x.
match: An integer vector giving the position in table of
the first match if there is a match, otherwise nomatch.
If x[i] is found to equal table[j] then the value
returned in the i-th position of the return value is j,
for the smallest possible j. If no match is found, the value
is nomatch.
%in%: A logical vector, indicating if a match was located for
each element of x: thus the values are TRUE or
FALSE and never NA.
%in% is currently defined as
"%in%" <- function(x, table) match(x, table, nomatch = 0) > 0
Factors, raw vectors and lists are converted to character vectors, and
then x and table are coerced to a common type (the later
of the two types in R's ordering, logical < integer < numeric <
complex < character) before matching. If incomparables has
positive length it is coerced to the common type.
Matching for lists is potentially very slow and best avoided except in simple cases.
Exactly what matches what is to some extent a matter of definition.
For all types, NA matches NA and no other value.
For real and complex values, NaN values are regarded
as matching any other NaN value, but not matching NA,
where for complex x, real and imaginary parts must match both
(unless containing at least one NA).
Character strings will be compared as byte sequences if any input is
marked as "bytes", and otherwise are regarded as equal if they are
in different encodings but would agree when translated to UTF-8 (see
Encoding).
That %in% never returns NA makes it particularly
useful in if conditions.
Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.
pmatch and charmatch for (partial)
string matching, match.arg, etc for function argument
matching.
findInterval similarly returns a vector of positions, but
finds numbers within intervals, rather than exact matches.
is.element for an S-compatible equivalent of %in%.
unique (and duplicated) are using the same
definitions of “match” or “equality” as match(),
and these are less strict than ==, e.g., for
NA and NaN in numeric or complex vectors,
or for strings with different encodings, see also above.
# NOT RUN {
## The intersection of two sets can be defined via match():
## Simple version:
## intersect <- function(x, y) y[match(x, y, nomatch = 0)]
intersect # the R function in base is slightly more careful
intersect(1:10, 7:20)
1:10 %in% c(1,3,5,9)
sstr <- c("c","ab","B","bba","c",NA,"@","bla","a","Ba","%")
sstr[sstr %in% c(letters, LETTERS)]
"%w/o%" <- function(x, y) x[!x %in% y] #-- x without y
(1:10) %w/o% c(3,7,12)
## Note that setdiff() is very similar and typically makes more sense:
c(1:6,7:2) %w/o% c(3,7,12) # -> keeps duplicates
setdiff(c(1:6,7:2), c(3,7,12)) # -> unique values
## Illuminating example about NA matching
r <- c(1, NA, NaN)
zN <- c(complex(real = NA , imaginary = r ), complex(real = r , imaginary = NA ),
complex(real = r , imaginary = NaN), complex(real = NaN, imaginary = r ))
zM <- cbind(Re=Re(zN), Im=Im(zN), match = match(zN, zN))
rownames(zM) <- format(zN)
zM ##--> many "NA's" (= 1) and the four non-NA's (3 different ones, at 7,9,10)
length(zN) # 12
unique(zN) # the "NA" and the 3 different non-NA NaN's
stopifnot(identical(unique(zN), zN[c(1, 7,9,10)]))
## very strict equality would have 4 duplicates (of 12):
symnum(outer(zN, zN, Vectorize(identical,c("x","y")),
FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE))
## removing "(very strictly) duplicates",
i <- c(5,8,11,12) # we get 8 pairwise non-identicals :
Ixy <- outer(zN[-i], zN[-i], Vectorize(identical,c("x","y")),
FALSE,FALSE,FALSE,FALSE)
stopifnot(identical(Ixy, diag(8) == 1))
# }