Assign Value to Elements in Certain Range in R (Example)

In this tutorial, I’ll show how to replace the values in a certain range by a new value in the R programming language.

Table of contents:

Sound good? Let’s dive right into the exemplifying R syntax.

Constructing Example Data

The following data is used as basement for this R tutorial:

x <- 1:10                              # Create example vector
x                                      # Print example vector
#  [1]  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10

As you can see based on the previous output of the RStudio console, our example data is a numeric vector ranging from 1 to 10.

Example: Assign Value to Elements in Certain Range Using Logical Conditions

In this example, I’ll explain how to assign a different value to all numbers that lie within a particular numerical range.

More precisely, we will exchange all values that are larger than 3 and smaller or equal to 7 by the new value 99.

For this, we can use logical operators and square brackets as shown below:

x_new <- x                             # Duplicate example vector
x_new[x_new > 3 & x_new <= 7] <- 99    # Replace values in range
x_new                                  # Print updated vector
#  [1]  1  2  3 99 99 99 99  8  9 10

Have a look at the previous RStudio console output: We have replaced several numbers by the value 99.

Video, Further Resources & Summary

Have a look at the following video of the Statistics Globe YouTube channel. I explain the topics of this article in the video:

Furthermore, you might have a look at the other articles of this homepage:

• Replace Values in Vector in R
• Replace Values in Factor Vector or Column
• Replace Value of Data Frame Variable Using dplyr Package
• Replace Specific Characters in String
• replace Function in R
• R Programming Language

In this R programming tutorial you have learned how to substitute the numbers in a specific range by a new value.

In this example, we have assigned new values to a vector. However, it would also be possible to use the same kind of R syntax to replace values in data frame columns.

In case you have additional questions, tell me about it in the comments.