Converting Vector to String in R

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Converting vector to string in R

You may want to convert a vector to a string when you need to combine vector elements into a single character string for data export. For example, exporting into csv, text, or database files.

Visual representation of the paste() function

Here are three ways to convert a vector to a string in R:

  1. Using paste()
  2. Using paste0()
  3. Using toString()

Method 1: Using paste()

For combining single or multiple vectors into a single string, you can use the paste() function with a specified separator (sep) and optional collapsing.

vec <- c("Ahsoka", "Din", "Grogu")

mando <- paste(vec, collapse = " ")

mando

# Output: [1] "Ahsoka Din Grogu"

You can use the “collapse” argument to specify the delimiter between each word in the vector.

vec <- c("Krunal", "Ankit", "Rushabh", "Dhaval")

# Convert vector to string
str <- paste(vec, collapse = "--")

str

# Output: [1] "Krunal--Ankit--Rushabh--Dhaval"

Multiple vectors

Converting multiple vectors into a string

What if you are working with multiple vectors? Since the paste() function accepts multiple vectors, it will return a single string containing multiple vectors.

vec1 <- c("x", "k")
vec2 <- c(19, 21)

combined_string <- paste(vec1, vec2, sep = "=", collapse = "; ")

combined_string

# Output: [1] "x=19; k=21"

Empty vector

If the input is an empty vector, the output will be an empty string.

empty_vec <- character(0)

empty_str <- paste(vec, collapse = ", ")

print(empty_str)

# Output: ""

Vector containing NULL or NA

If the input vector contains NA values, the output will have NA values as a string.

vec_with_na <- c("babli", NA, "bb", "fameer", "hola")

empty_str_with_na <- paste(vec_with_na, collapse = ", ")

print(empty_str_with_na)

# Output: [1] "babli, NA, bb, fameer, hola"

If you want to handle NA values, use na.omit() or is.na() methods.

Method 2: Using paste0()

Using paste0() to convert a numeric, logical, or character vector into a string

The paste0() method is an optimized version of the paste() method with no separator.

numeric_vec <- c(11, 2, 31, 4, 15)

character_vec <- c("bmw", "maruti", "tata")

logical_vec <- c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE)

paste0(character_vec, collapse = "")
# Output: [1] "bmwmarutitata"

paste0(logical_vec, collapse = "-")
# Output: [1] "TRUE-FALSE-TRUE"

paste0(numeric_vec, collapse = "")
# Output: [1] "11231415"

Method 3: Using toString()

Visual representation of the toString() function

vec <- c("Ahsoka", "Din", "Grogu")

str <- toString(vec)

print(str)

# Output: [1] "Ahsoka, Din, Grogu"

Let’s check the data type.

rv <- c("Ahsoka", "Din", "Grogu")

mando <- toString(rv)

print(typeof(mando))

# Output: [1] "character"

Performance test for different methods

Using system.time(), we can compare the performance of all three methods and conclude which is the fastest method when the size of a vector is enormous.

large_vec <- 1:10000

# Timing different approaches
system.time({
  result1 <- paste(large_vec, collapse = ", ")
})

system.time({
  result2 <- toString(large_vec)
})

system.time({
  result3 <- paste0(large_vec, collapse = ", ")
})

# Output:

# user system elapsed
# 0.003 0.000 0.003

# user system elapsed
# 0.003 0.000 0.003

# user system elapsed
# 0.003 0.000 0.003

You can see that all these methods took the same time. That means you can choose any method when it comes to performance.

That’s all!

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