Data Types

There are 6 types of data in R that are important to know, but the essential ones are logical, numeric, and character.

Logical Also known as boolean data, logical data is shown as TRUE or FALSE values:

logical1 <- TRUE
logical2 <- FALSE

# The class() function outputs the data type of the object
class(logical1)

[1] "logical"

print(logical2)

[1] FALSE

print(class(logical2))

[1] "logical"

Numeric represents all data types that are real numbers with or with out decimal points.

height <- 5.5
acres <- 1000

class(height)

[1] "numeric"

print(acres)

[1] 1000

print(class(acres))

[1] "numeric"

Character specifies character or string values in a variable such as a singular character ‘A’ or a string of characters in ‘Apple’.

# Use '' or "" to show it's a string of characters
motorsports <- "formula1"

print(motorsports)

[1] "formula1"

print(class(motorsports))

[1] "character"

Integer specifies real values without decimal points

# the suffix i specifies its imaginary data.
complex <- 3 + 2i

print(class(integer))

[1] "function"

Raw specifies values as raw bytes

# convert character to raw
raw_variable <- charToRaw("Welcome to Programiz")

print(raw_variable)

 [1] 57 65 6c 63 6f 6d 65 20 74 6f 20 50 72 6f 67 72 61 6d 69 7a

print(class(raw_variable))

[1] "raw"

# convert raw to character
char_variable <- rawToChar(raw_variable)

print(char_variable)

[1] "Welcome to Programiz"

print(class(char_variable))

[1] "character"