Search code examples
rstringfor-loopchariteration

Iterating over characters of string R

Could somebody explain me why this does not print all the numbers separately in R. 

numberstring <- "0123456789"

for (number in numberstring) {
  print(number)
}

Aren't strings just arrays of chars? Whats the way to do it in R?

Solution

  • In R "0123456789" is a character vector of length 1.

    If you want to iterate over the characters, you have to split the string into a vector of single characters using strsplit.

    numberstring <- "0123456789"

numberstring_split <- strsplit(numberstring, "")[[1]]

for (number in numberstring_split) {
  print(number)
}
# [1] "0"
# [1] "1"
# [1] "2"
# [1] "3"
# [1] "4"
# [1] "5"
# [1] "6"
# [1] "7"
# [1] "8"
# [1] "9"