nth, first & last R Functions of dplyr Package (4 Examples)
On this page, I’ll explain how to extract certain values from a vector with the nth, first, and last functions of the dplyr package in the R programming language.
The page will consist of four examples for the extraction of specific vector elements. To be more specific, the page looks as follows:
- Creation of Example Data
- Example 1: nth Function
- Example 2: nth Function with Negative Value
- Example 3: first Function
- Example 4: last Function
- Video & Further Resources
So now the part you have been waiting for – the examples:
Creation of Example Data
The examples of this R tutorial are based on the following vector:
x <- letters[1:10] # Create example vector x # "a" "b" "c" "d" "e" "f" "g" "h" "i" "j"
Our example vector is a character vector and contains ten letters.
In order to be able to use the nth, first, and last functions, we also need to install and load the dplyr package to R:
install.packages("dplyr") # Install & load dplyr library("dplyr")
Now, we can move on to the application of the functions…
Example 1: nth Function
Example 1 explains how to apply the nth function of the dplyr package. The nth function is used to extract a vector element somewhere in the middle of a vector.
Let’s assume that we want to extract the fifth element of our vector, then we can use the nth function as follows:
nth(x, 5) # Apply nth function # "e"
The RStudio console output is “e”, i.e. the fifth element of our example vector is the character “e”.
Example 2: nth Function with Negative Value
We can also use the nth function from the end of a vector. We simply have to put a minus sign in front of our position:
nth(x, - 3) # nth function with negative # "h"
The character “h” is the third last value of our example vector.
Example 3: first Function
The first function works similar as the nth function, but this R function returns just the first element of an input vector:
first(x) # Apply first function # "a"
The first element of our vector is “a”.
Example 4: last Function
The last command does the opposite as the first function: It returns the last element of a vector to the RStudio console:
last(x) # Apply last function # "j"
The character “j” is the last entry of our vector.
Video & Further Resources
Do you need more info on the dplyr package? Then you may have a look at the following video of my YouTube channel. I’m explaining other commands of the dplyr package in the video.
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Furthermore, you might read some of the other tutorials of this website:
- substr & substring Functions in R
- Extract First or Last n Characters from String with Base R
- str_extract Function of stringr Package
- dplyr R Package
- R Functions List (+ Examples)
- The R Programming Language
To summarize: In this R tutorial you learned how to get the first, last, or nth value from a vector or array. In case you have any additional comments or questions, please let me know in the comments section.
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