Replace given value in vector

A simple way to do this is using ifelse, which is vectorized. If the condition is satisfied, we use a replacement value, otherwise we use the original value.

v <- c(3, 2, 1, 0, 4, 0)
ifelse(v == 0, 1, v)

We can avoid a named variable by using a pipe.

c(3, 2, 1, 0, 4, 0) %>% ifelse(. == 0, 1, .)

A common task is to do multiple replacements. Instead of nested ifelse statements, we can use case_when from dplyr:

case_when(v == 0 ~ 1,
          v == 1 ~ 2,
          TRUE ~ v)

Old answer:

For factor or character vectors, we can use revalue from plyr:

> revalue(c("a", "b", "c"), c("b" = "B"))
[1] "a" "B" "c"

This has the advantage of only specifying the input vector once, so we can use a pipe like

x %>% revalue(c("b" = "B"))

Perhaps replace is what you are looking for:

> x = c(3, 2, 1, 0, 4, 0)
> replace(x, x==0, 1)
[1] 3 2 1 1 4 1

Or, if you don't have x (any specific reason why not?):

replace(c(3, 2, 1, 0, 4, 0), c(3, 2, 1, 0, 4, 0)==0, 1)

Many people are familiar with gsub, so you can also try either of the following:

as.numeric(gsub(0, 1, x))
as.numeric(gsub(0, 1, c(3, 2, 1, 0, 4, 0)))

Update

After reading the comments, perhaps with is an option:

with(data.frame(x = c(3, 2, 1, 0, 4, 0)), replace(x, x == 0, 1))

Another simpler option is to do:

 > x = c(1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 2, 1, 3, 2)
 > x[x==1] <- 0
 > x
 [1] 0 0 2 4 5 2 0 3 2

Tags:

Replace

R