--- Rick Bilonick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 2006-05-01 at 13:26 -0400, John Kane wrote: > > This is a simple question but I cannot seem to > find > > the answer. > > I have two vectors but with missing data and I > want to > > add them together with > > the NA's being ignored. > > > > Clearly I need to get the NA ignored. na.action? > > > > I have done some searching and cannot get > na.action to > > help. > > This must be a common enough issue that the answer > is > > staring me in the face > > but I just don't see it. > > > > Simple example > > a <- c(2, NA, 3) > > b <- c(3,4, 5) > > > > What I want is > > c <- a + b where > > c is ( 5 , 4 ,8) > > > > However I get > > c is (5,NA, 8) > > > > What am I missing? Or do I somehow need to recode > the > > NA's as missing? > > > > Thanks > > Your example shows that you are not ignoring the > NA's but treating them > as zeroes. This may or may not make sense depending > on the application. > > Your comment "Or do I somehow need to recode the > NA's as missing" is > puzzling. NA denotes a missing value. > > If you insist on treating NA's as zeroes, then just > replace the NA's > with zeroes before adding: > > > a[is.na(a)] <- 0 > > Rick B.
Thanks, that is exactly what I wanted to know (and do). In this case it makes sense to treat the data as 0's but in the original database I don't want to do so. This solution will probably be obvious in Help now but I could not see an easy way to do this. Help is sometimes a bit cryptic when one is a new user of R. Sorry about the recode statement. I had intended to write "recode as zero". The fingers are faster than the mind. ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html