How to Add Two or More Vectors in R

To add vectors in R, use the + operator.

In this tutorial, we will not concatenate the vectors; we will perform addition operations on two or more vectors.

If your intention is to concatenate strings from two vectors element-wise, use the paste(), c(), or paste0() function.

Example 1: Adding two vectors

How to add two vectors in R
Figure 1: Adding two vectors using the “+” operator
vec1 <- 1:3
cat("The first vector is: ", vec1, "\n")

vec2 <- 4:6
cat("The second vector is: ", vec2, "\n")

vec3 <- vec1 + vec2
cat("The final vector is: ", vec3)

Output

The first vector is: 1 2 3
The second vector is: 4 5 6
The final vector is: 5 7 9

Example 2: Adding two vectors of different lengths

What if two vectors have different lengths?

Well in that case, we will get a warning message: longer object length is not a multiple of shorter object length.

vec1 <- 1:3
cat("The first vector is: ", fv, "\n")

vec2 <- 4:8
cat("The second vector is: ", sv, "\n")

vec3 <- vec1 + vec2
cat("The final vector is: ", add)

Output

The first vector is: 1 2 3

The second vector is: 4 5 6 7 8

Warning message:
In vec1 + vec2 :
 longer object length is not a multiple of shorter object length

The final vector is: 5 7 9 8 10

Example 3: Adding three vectors

vec1 <- c(1, 2, 3)
vec2 <- c(4, 5, 6)
vec3 <- c(7, 8, 9)

vec4 <- vec1 + vec2 + vec3
vec4

Output

[1] 12  15  18

Example 4: Adding vectors of different DataTypes

num_vec <- 1:3
cat("The first vector is: ", fv, "\n")

char_vec <- c("Snape", "Minerva", "Horace")
cat("The second vector is: ", sv, "\n")

add <- num_vec + char_vec
cat("The final vector is: ", add)

Output

The first vector is: 1 2 3
The second vector is: Snape Minerva Horace

Error in fv + sv : non-numeric argument to binary operator
Execution halted

Example 4: Adding vectors of character type

vec1 <- rep("Grogu", 3)
cat("The first vector is: ", vec1, "\n")

vec2 <- rep("Grogu", 3)
cat("The second vector is: ", vec2, "\n")

add <- vec1 + vec2
print(add)
cat("The final vector is: ", add)

Output

The first vector is: MJ MJ MJ
The second vector is: MJ MJ MJ
Error in dv + iv : non-numeric argument to binary operator
Execution halted

The + operator is not designed to concatenate or add character strings in R. We get an error because the addition operation (+) is not defined for character vectors.

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