How to Create a Vector of Zeros in R (5 Examples)

In this R tutorial you’ll learn how to declare a vector or array containing only zeros.

The article will contain these topics:

1) Example 1: Creating Vector of Zeros Using rep() Function

2) Example 2: Creating Vector of Zeros Using rep() Function & 0L

3) Example 3: Creating Vector of Zeros Using numeric() Function

4) Example 4: Creating Vector of Zeros Using integer() Function

5) Example 5: Creating Vector of Zeros Using c() Function

6) Video & Further Resources

Let’s get started.

Example 1: Creating Vector of Zeros Using rep() Function

Example 1 illustrates how to create a vector consisting of zeros using the rep function.

x1 <- rep(0, 5)               # Applying rep() function
x1                            # Printing vector to RStudio console
# 0 0 0 0 0

The RStudio console returns the result of the previous R code: A vector of length five consisting only of zeros.

Example 2: Creating Vector of Zeros Using rep() Function & 0L

Alternatively to the R syntax shown in Example 1, we can also specify 0L instead of 0 within the rep function:

x2 <- rep(0L, 5)              # Applying rep() function
x2                            # Printing vector to RStudio console
# 0 0 0 0 0

Example 3: Creating Vector of Zeros Using numeric() Function

We can also use the numeric function to construct a vector of zeros. For this, we simply have to specify the length of the vector within the numeric function:

x3 <- numeric(5)              # Applying numeric() function
x3                            # Printing vector to RStudio console
# 0 0 0 0 0

Example 4: Creating Vector of Zeros Using integer() Function

Similar to Example 3, we can use the integer function to create a vector of zeros.

x4 <- integer(5)              # Applying integer() function
x4                            # Printing vector to RStudio console
# 0 0 0 0 0

Example 5: Creating Vector of Zeros Using c() Function

Last but not least, we can also use the c function to construct an array or vector containing zeros (even though the c function might be inconvenient for longer vector objects):

x5 <- c(0, 0, 0, 0, 0)        # Applying c() function
x5                            # Printing vector to RStudio console
# 0 0 0 0 0

Video & Further Resources

Have a look at the following video of my YouTube channel. I’m explaining the R programming syntax of this article in the video:

Besides the video, you may want to have a look at the other articles of my website. Some articles about creating data objects are listed below.

To summarize: You learned in this tutorial how to create a vector of zeros in the R programming language. Please let me know in the comments, if you have further questions.