Explain seq example seq(stats::rnorm(20))

Question

In the R manual there is one example of seq as follows:

seq(stats::rnorm(20))

Can someone explain to me what it is doing and is supposed to generate?

score 4 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 28 '16 at 15:18

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You are effectively using this argument along.with in the seq function. This argument will tell seq to simply make a vector of the length of the object, which is 20 in your case.

From ?seq:

generates the sequence 1, 2, ..., length(from) (as if argument along.with had been specified), unless the argument is numeric of length 1 when it is interpreted as 1:from (even for seq(0) for compatibility with S). Using either seq_along or seq_len is much preferred

edited Sep 28 '16 at 15:18

Jaap

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answered Sep 28 '16 at 14:45

Stephen

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Stephen, thank u for your quick reply. I am a novice in R. – student Sep 28 '16 at 18:07

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 28 '16 at 15:24

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The help also says

seq(stats::rnorm(20)) # effectively 'along'

So you are using the argument along.with, which reads:

along.with take the length from the length of this argument.

That's why it generates a sequence with 20 integers, as it's length(rnorm(20L))

edited Sep 28 '16 at 15:24

RHertel

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answered Sep 28 '16 at 14:48

catastrophic-failure

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RHertel, thank u for your quick reply. I am a novice in R. – student Sep 28 '16 at 18:07

Explain seq example seq(stats::rnorm(20))

2 Answers2