How to Remove Specific Elements from Vector in R

You can use the following basic syntax to remove specific elements from a vector in R:

#remove 'a', 'b', 'c' from my_vector
my_vector[! my_vector %in% c('a', 'b, 'c')]

The following examples show how to use this syntax in practice.

Example 1: Remove Elements from Character Vector

The following code shows how to remove elements from a character vector in R:

#define vector
x <- c('Mavs', 'Nets', 'Hawks', 'Bucks', 'Spurs', 'Suns')

#remove 'Mavs' and 'Spurs' from vector
x <- x[! x %in% c('Mavs', 'Spurs')]

#view updated vector
x

[1] "Nets"  "Hawks" "Bucks" "Suns"

Notice that both ‘Mavs’ and ‘Spurs’ were removed from the vector.

Example 2: Remove Elements from Numeric Vector

The following code shows how to remove elements from a numeric vector in R:

#define numeric vector
x <- c(1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 12, 12, 13)

#remove 1, 4, and 5
x <- x[! x %in% c(1, 4, 5)]

#view updated vector
x

[1]  2  2  2  3  7  7  8  9 12 12 13

Notice that every occurrence of the values 1, 4, and 5 were removed from the vector.

We can also specify a range of values that we’d like to remove from the numeric vector:

#define numeric vector
x <- c(1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 12, 12, 13)

#remove values between 2 and 10
x <- x[! x %in% 2:10]

#view updated vector
x

[1]  1 12 12 13

Notice that every value between 2 and 10 was removed from the vector.

We can also remove values greater or less than a specific number:

#define numeric vector
x <- c(1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 12, 12, 13)

#remove values less than 3 or greater than 10
x <- x[!(x < 3 | x > 10)]

#view updated vector
x

[1] 3 4 5 5 7 7 8 9