Book Image

Learning Shiny

By : Hernan Resnizky
Book Image

Learning Shiny

By: Hernan Resnizky

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Learning Shiny
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introducing R, RStudio, and Shiny
Index

Variables in R


Unlike Java or C#, R enables total flexibility in the assignment of variables. This means that you can assign objects of different types to the same variable. This will cause overriding:

var1 <- 10
var1 <- "a string"

In this case, for instance, R will not throw an error for var1. In addition, there is no need to pre-declare the class of the variable.

The assignment of variables in R can be done in the following three ways:

  • <- or ->: These arrows assign the corresponding value to a variable. However, the first alternative is more common:

    var1 <- 10
    10 -> var1
    
  • =: This is similar to <- or ->.

    Tip

    As in most programming languages, it is important to keep in mind that whenever a comparison is needed, == must be used.

  • assign(): This is a function with the name of the variable as its first parameter and the value as its second:

    > assign("var1",6)
    

For conventional variable assignments, there is no need to use this function. However, it becomes particularly useful...