Simple way to subset SpatialPolygonsDataFrame (i.e. delete polygons) by attribute in R

Question

I would like simply delete some polygons from a SpatialPolygonsDataFrame object based on corresponding attribute values in the @data data frame so that I can plot a simplifi

Answer 1

When I tried to do this in R 3.2.1, tim riffe's technique above did not work for me, although modifying it slightly fixed the problem. I found that I had to specifically reference the data slot as well before specifying the attribute to subset on, as below:

world.map <- world.map[world.map@data$AREA > 30000, ]
plot(world.map)

Adding this as an alternative answer in case others come across the same issue.