recode_vals {labelr}

Recode Values of a Free-standing Vector

Description

Takes a stand-alone vector (x), and recodes select values (bef) to some other set of values (aft), returning the recoded vector.

Usage

recode_vals(x, bef, aft, default.lab = "bef", unique = FALSE)

Arguments

x

an integer, character, factor, or logical vector.

bef

the "before" (i.e., current) values of x to be recoded.

aft

the "after" (recoded) values to be substituted in the returned vector in place of the positionally corresponding bef values of the x vector ("positionally corresponding" means that the first element of aft is the replacement (recode) for all x instances of the first element of bef, and so on for the respective second bef and aft elements, etc.; see examples). variables to which value labels will be added.

default.lab

the "aft" value to be used for values of x for which no "bef" value is specified. default.lab = "bef" (the default) will use (retain) the existing value of x as its own recode, coercing to character as needed. For example, if the value x=4 is observed in x but is not included in the "bef" argument, the returned vector will have values of 4 (integer) or "4" (character), depending on whether the recodes that –are– supplied are numeric (then 4) or character (then "4").

unique

if TRUE, return only the mapping itself (bef argument values as names, aft argument values as values), else if FALSE (default), return the full recoded vector of x values.

Details

While labelr users do not need to engage recode_vals directly, it is the underlying function that powers certain core labelr functions, including add_val_labs and add_name_labs. The bef argument identifies the values of x to recode, and aft argument indicates what each bef value should be recoded to (order matters: bef=c("a", "b", "c"), aft=c(1, 2, 3) means that "a" values of x will be recoded to 1 values in returned vector, "b" values will be recoded to 2, and "c" values will be recoded to 3).

Value

A vector of length equal length of supplied vector, with x values found in bef argument switched to the corresponding values found in the aft argument.

Examples

z <- mtcars$gear
z[1] <- NA
z
recode_vals(z, c(5, 3, 4), c("five", "three", "four"))
irsp <- iris$Species[c(1:3, 60:62, 148:150)]
irsp
recode_vals(irsp, c("setosa", "versicolor", "virginica"), c("SE", "VE", "VI"))
class(irsp) # factor
class(recode_vals(
  irsp, c("setosa", "versicolor", "virginica"),
  c("SE", "VE", "VI")
)) # coerced to character
set.seed(112)
x_logic <- sample(c(TRUE, FALSE), 10, replace = TRUE)
x_logic
recode_vals(x_logic, bef = c(FALSE), c("Fake News!"))