Difference Between & and && in R
In R Programming Language, “&” and “&&” are two logical operators used to combine logical expressions. However, they behave differently in terms of how they evaluate expressions and return results.
The “&” operator evaluates both expressions and returns a vector of the same length as the inputs, where each element is the result of a logical “and” operation. This means that it returns TRUE only if both expressions are TRUE and FALSE.
- The “&” operator performs the element-wise comparison and returns a logical vector of the same length as its input.
- the “&&” operator evaluates only the first element of the input and returns the single logical value.
The “&” and “&&” operators are used for logical operations. The &” and “&&” are two logical operators used to evaluate logical expressions.
& Operator in R
The “&” operator is a logical operator used to evaluate logical expressions. The “element-wise logical AND” operator because it compares two logical vectors element by element and returns the new logical vector indicating which elements are TRUE in both vectors.
R
x <- c ( TRUE , FALSE , TRUE ) y <- c ( FALSE , TRUE , TRUE ) x & y |
Output:
[1] FALSE FALSE TRUE
&& Operator in R
The “&&” operator is the “logical AND” operator. It is used to evaluate two logical expressions and return a single logical value indicating whether both expressions are TRUE or not.
R
x <- 5 if (x > 0 && x < 10) { print ( "x is positive and less than 10" ) } else { print ( "x is either negative or greater than 10" ) } |
Output:
[1] "x is positive and less than 10"
Now let’s look at one more example using the “&&” operator.
R
# "&" operator x <- 7 y <- 11 z <- 17 x < y & y < z # "&" operator x < y && y < z |
Output:
TRUE TRUE
Difference between & and && in R
& |
&& |
|
Input |
Two logical vectors, matrices, or arrays of the same length and dimension. | Two logical expressions or scalar values. |
Output |
A logical vector of the same length and dimension as the inputs. | A single logical value. |
Evaluation |
Element-wise on both inputs, even if they are of different lengths. | Short-circuited: Only the second expression is evaluated if the first is TRUE. |
Use in if statements |
Returns a warning if the length of the inputs is not a multiple of each other. | Returns an error if the length of the inputs is greater than one. |
Use in loops |
Returns a logical vector of the same length as the inputs. | Returns a single logical value, so not typically used in loops. |