Remove zeros in the start and end of a vector

Try this:

x[ min( which ( x != 0 )) : max( which( x != 0 )) ]

Find index for all values that are not zero, and take the first -min and last - max to subset x.

You can try something like:

x=c(0,0,0,0,4,5,0,0,3,2,7,0,0,0)
rl <- rle(x)

if(rl$values[1] == 0)
    x <- tail(x, -rl$lengths[1])
if(tail(rl$values,1) == 0)
    x <- head(x, -tail(rl$lengths,1))

x
## 4 5 0 0 3 2 7

Hope it helps,

alex

This would also work :

x[cumsum(x) & rev(cumsum(rev(x)))]
# [1] 4 5 0 0 3 2 7