R Operators

Operators are used in R to perform various operations on variables and values. Among the most commonly used ones are arithmetic and assignment operators.

Syntax

The following R code uses an arithmetic operator for multiplication, *, to calculate the product of two numbers, along with the assignment operator, <- to store the result in the variable x.

# Store five times three in variable x
x <- 5 * 3

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Operators in R can be organized into the following groups:

• Arithmetic operators for traditional mathematical evaluations such as addition and subtraction.
• Assignment operators for assigning values to variables.
• Comparison operators for testing equality between values.
• Logical operators for evaluating the “truthiness” of values against one another.
• Miscellaneous operators for various tasks including vectors and sequencing.

Arithmetic operators

R supports the following arithmetic operators:

• Addition, +, which returns the sum of two numbers.
• Subtraction, -, which returns the difference between two numbers.
• Multiplication, *, which returns the product of two numbers.
• Division, /, which returns the quotient of two numbers.
• Exponents, ^, which returns the value of one number raised to the power of another.
• Modulus, %%, which returns the remainder of one number divided by another.
• Integer Division, %/%, which returns the integer quotient of two numbers.

Assignment operators

R uses the following assignment operators:

• <- assigns a value to a variable from right to left.
• -> assigns a value to a variable left to right.
• <<- is a global version of <-.
• ->> is a global version of ->.
• = works the same way as <-, but its use is discouraged.

Comparison operators

R has the following comparison operators:

• Equal, ==, which returns TRUE if two values are equal.
• Not equal, !=, which returns TRUE if two values are not equal.
• Less than, <, which returns TRUE if left value is less than right value.
• Less than or equal to, <=, which returns TRUE if left value is less than or equal to right value.
• Greater than, >, which returns TRUE if left value is greater than right value.
• Greater than or equal to, >=, which returns TRUE if left value is greater than or equal to right value.

Logical operators

R has the following logical operators:

• Element-wise AND, &, for comparing each element and returning TRUE if both elements are TRUE.
• Logical AND, &&, which returns TRUE if both values are TRUE, only evaluates as many elements as necessary.
• Element-wise OR, |, for comparing each element and returning TRUE if either element is TRUE.
• Logical OR, ||, which returns TRUE if either value is TRUE, only evaluates as many elements as necessary.
• Logical NOT, !, which returns TRUE if the associated statement is FALSE.

Note: The long form of AND and OR (&& and ||) are preferred for if statements as the short form can produce a vector value.

Miscellaneous operators

R uses the following miscellaneous operators:

• The : operator creates a sequence of numbers from the left argument to the right one.
• The %in% operator returns TRUE if the left argument is in the vector to the right.
• The %*% operator performs matrix multiplication on two matrices.