Filter data frame rows based on values in vector

Question

What is the best way to filter rows from data frame when the values to be deleted are stored in a vector? In my case I have a column with dates and want to remove several dates.

I know how to delete rows corresponding to one day, using !=, e.g.:

m[m$date != "01/31/11", ]

To remove several dates, specified in a vector, I tried:

m[m$date != c("01/31/11", "01/30/11"), ]

However, this generates a warning message:

Warning message:
In `!=.default`(m$date, c("01/31/11", "01/30/11")) :
longer object length is not a multiple of shorter object length
Calls: [ ... [.data.frame -> Ops.dates -> NextMethod -> Ops.times -> NextMethod

What is the correct way to apply a filter based on multiple values?

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:06:43Z

40

nzcoops is spot on with his suggestion. I posed this question in the R Chat a while back and Paul Teetor suggested defining a new function:

`%notin%` <- function(x,y) !(x %in% y)

Which can then be used as follows:

foo <- letters[1:6]

> foo[foo %notin% c("a", "c", "e")]
[1] "b" "d" "f"

Needless to say, this little gem is now in my R profile and gets used quite often.

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:06

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Sep 21, 2011 at 11:17

Chase

69.4k18 gold badges147 silver badges164 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

4 Comments

Peter M Over a year ago

Nice. I always find it breaks my concentration when I have to type something like !(x %in% y)... great tip.

tumultous_rooster Over a year ago

I don't think dplyr can handle this, e.g., filter(df, foo %notin% c("a", "c", "e"))

tumultous_rooster Over a year ago

It was just a comment! I was trying to use %noin% in a filter call and it didn't work, non-suprisingly.

Ben G Over a year ago

@MattO'Brien, I posted an equivalent using anti_join below . . .

nzcoops · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-21 23:58:44Z

14

I think for that you want:

m[!m$date %in% c("01/31/11","01/30/11"),]

edited Sep 21, 2011 at 23:58

answered Sep 21, 2011 at 5:15

nzcoops

9,4009 gold badges43 silver badges55 bronze badges

1 Comment

vagabond Over a year ago

This doesn't seem to work when date is in as.POSIXct class !

Vova Naumov · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-11 10:30:53Z

4

cool way is to use Negate function to create new one:

`%ni%` <- Negate(`%in%`)

than you can use it to find not intersected elements

answered Apr 11, 2013 at 10:30

Vova Naumov

511 bronze badge

Comments

Ben G · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-05 15:22:28Z

2

In regards to some of the questions above, here is a tidyverse compliant solution. I used anti_join from dplyr to achieve the same effect:

library(tidyverse)

numbers <- tibble(numbers = c(1:10))
numbers_to_remove <- tibble(number = c(3, 4, 5))

numbers %>%
  anti_join(numbers_to_remove)

answered Jul 5, 2018 at 15:22

Ben G

4,3582 gold badges24 silver badges46 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Filter data frame rows based on values in vector

4 Answers 4

4 Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

4 Answers 4

4 Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related