The “paste0” Function in R

  • Package: Base R (No specific package, it’s a built-in function)

  • Purpose: To concatenate (paste) vectors without any separator.

  • General Class: String Manipulation

  • Required Argument(s):

    • ...: A sequence of character vectors to be concatenated.

  • Notable Optional Arguments:

    • sep: A character string used to separate the concatenated elements. The default is no space.

    • collapse: A character string used to concatenate the result into a single string.

  • Example:

  • # Starting name of the File

    File_Name = "Text_File"

    # Character between name and number(s)

    File_Sep = "_"

    # File extension

    File_Ext = ".txt"

    # The number of file names

    File_N = 10

    # The names and numbers are pasted together

    File_Vec = paste0(File_Name, File_Sep, 1:File_N, File_Ext)

    # Print the file names

    print(File_Vec)

    # Example using collapse

    paste0(c("These", "were", "seperate", "vector", "elements!"), collapse = " ")

  • In this example, the paste function along with the “sep” argument is used to generate a vector of file names (the sep argument equals ““ by default). This can be used when you save multiple files from a process being run, such as during a simulation study. The last line of code demonstrates the behavior of the “collapse” argument. The “collapse” argument joins the elements of a vector into a single character element (or a vector of length 1 if you prefer to think of it like that).

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The “paste” Function in R