numbers {essentials}

Number Vectors

Description

Creates or coerces objects of type “numeric” or “complex”. is.numbers is a more general test of an object being interpretable as numbers.

Usage

numbers(length = 0)
as.numbers(x, strict = TRUE, ...)
is.numbers(x)

Arguments

length

A non-negative integer specifying the desired length. Double values will be coerced to integer: supplying an argument of length other than one is an error.

x

object to be coerced or tested.

strict

TRUE or FALSE, should a vector of complex numbers where each number is strictly real (real component is NA or NaN or imaginary component is NA or NaN or 0) be converted to a vector of real numbers?

...

further arguments passed to or from other methods. as.numbers is not a generic function, but it can be made into one if desired. See setGeneric.

Details

numbers is identical to numeric and double (and real). It creates a double-precision vector of the specified length with each element equal to 0.

as.numbers attempts to coerce its argument to be of double or complex type: like as.vector it strips attributes including names.

is.numbers is a more general test of an object being considered numbers, meaning the base type of the class is double or integer or complex and values can reasonably be regarded as numbers (e.g., arithmetic on them makes sense, and comparison should be done via the base type).

Value

for numbers see double.

as.numbers returns either a double or complex vector.

is.numbers(x) is defined as is.numeric(x) || is.complex(x).

Examples

x <- 1:5
names(x) <- c("a", "b", "c", "d", "e")
as.numbers(x)  # vector converted from integer to double, names removed


x <- x + 0i  # x is now a complex vector
as.numbers(x)  # vector of type double since all numbers were purely real


## vector of type complex, despite being purely real
as.numbers(x, strict = FALSE)


x <- x + 1i
## vector remains of type complex since numbers are not purely real
as.numbers(x)