Remove zeros in the start and end of a vector

Question

I have a vector like this:

x <-  c(0, 0, 0, 0, 4, 5, 0, 0, 3, 2, 7, 0, 0, 0)

I want to keep only the elements from position 5 to 11. I w

Answer 1

You can try something like:

x=c(0,0,0,0,4,5,0,0,3,2,7,0,0,0)
rl <- rle(x)

if(rl$values[1] == 0)
    x <- tail(x, -rl$lengths[1])
if(tail(rl$values,1) == 0)
    x <- head(x, -tail(rl$lengths,1))

x
## 4 5 0 0 3 2 7

Hope it helps,

alex