seq Function in R (5 Examples)

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to generate a sequence of numbers using the seq function in the R programming language.

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Definition & Basic R Syntax of seq Function

Definition: The seq R function generates a sequence of numeric values.

Basic R Syntax: You can find the basic R programming syntax of the seq function below.

seq(1, 5)                       # Basic R syntax of seq function

In the following, I’ll show five examples for the application of the seq function in R programming.

Example 1: Basic Application of seq() Function

The following code illustrates how to apply the seq function in its most minimalistic way:

seq(10)                         # Apply seq function
# 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10

In the previous R code, we simply specified the value 10 within the seq function. In this case, the function uses the value 1 as starting point and the value 10 as ending point of the sequence. As you can see based on the previous R code, we therefore created a numeric vector ranging from 1 to 10.

Example 2: Generating Sequence from X to Y

In this Section, I’ll show how to modify the starting point of our sequence using the from argument of the seq function.

seq(3, 10)                      # seq function from to
# 3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10

In the previous R syntax, we specified two values. The first value is the starting point (i.e. the from argument) and the second value is the ending point (i.e. the to argument).

Example 3: Generating Sequence from X to Y by Certain Value

In this Example, I’ll explain how to create a sequence with an increment unequal to 1. For this, we have to specify a third value within the seq function (i.e. the by argument):

seq(3, 10, 0.5)                 # seq function by 0.5
# 3.0  3.5  4.0  4.5  5.0  5.5  6.0  6.5  7.0  7.5  8.0  8.5  9.0  9.5 10.0

The previous R code generated a sequence with increment 0.33.

Example 4: Generating Sequence from X to Y with Given Length

In Example 4, I’ll explain how to return a sequence of numeric values with a manually specified length using the length.out argument. In this example, we specify that the length of our vector should be 5:

seq(3, 10, length.out = 5)      # Sequence of length 5
# 3.00  4.75  6.50  8.25 10.00

Example 5: Generating Sequence from X to Y Along Certain Data Object

Similar to the length.out argument shown in Example 4, we can also use the along.with argument. The along.with argument specifies that the output of the seq function should have the same length as the data object assigned to along.with.

seq(3, 10, along.with = 1:5)    # Using along.with argument
# 3.00  4.75  6.50  8.25 10.00

Video, Further Resources & Summary

I have recently published a video on my YouTube channel, which shows the examples of this post. Please find the video below:

In addition to the video, you may want to have a look at some of the other articles of my website. I have released several articles already.

• Create Sequence of Repeated Values
• rep Function in R
• R pretty Function
• R Functions List (+ Examples)
• The R Programming Language

In summary: This article showed how to apply the seq function in the R programming language.

Note that the R programming language provides some primitive alternatives to the seq function, which can be used to improve the speed and efficiency of a code. These functions include seq.int(), seq_along(), and seq_len().

Don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments below, in case you have any additional questions and/or comments. In addition, don’t forget to subscribe to my email newsletter in order to get updates on new articles.