Select every other element from a vector

r vector seq
user1313954 picture user1313954 · Nov 19, 2012 · Viewed 43.1k times · Source

Let's say I had a vector:

remove <- c(17, 18, 19, 20, 24, 25, 30, 31, 44, 45).

How do I select / extract every second value in the vector? Like so: 17, 19, 24, 30, 44

I'm trying to use the seq function: seq(remove, 2) but it doesn't quite work.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer

Sven Hohenstein picture Sven Hohenstein · Nov 19, 2012 
remove[c(TRUE, FALSE)]

will do the trick.

How it works?

If logical vectors are used for indexing in R, their values are recycled if the index vector is shorter than the vector containing the values.

Here, the vector remove contains ten values. If the index vector c(TRUE, FALSE) is used, the actual command is: remove[c(TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE, TRUE, FALSE)]

Hence, all values with odd index numbers are selected.

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