dplyr if_else() vs base R ifelse()

Question

I am fairly proficient within the Tidyverse, but have always used ifelse() instead of dplyr if_else(). I want to switch this behavior and default t

Answer 1

if_else is more strict. It checks that both alternatives are of the same type and otherwise throws an error, while ifelse will promote types as necessary. This may be a benefit in some circumstances, but may otherwise break scripts if you don't check for errors or explicitly force type conversion. For example:

ifelse(c(TRUE,TRUE,FALSE),"a",3)
[1] "a" "a" "3"
if_else(c(TRUE,TRUE,FALSE),"a",3)
Error: `false` must be type character, not double