How to count TRUE values in a logical vector

Question

In R, what is the most efficient/idiomatic way to count the number of TRUE values in a logical vector? I can think of two ways:

z <- sample(c         


        

Answer 1

Another option which hasn't been mentioned is to use which:

length(which(z))

Just to actually provide some context on the "which is faster question", it's always easiest just to test yourself. I made the vector much larger for comparison:

z <- sample(c(TRUE,FALSE),1000000,rep=TRUE)
system.time(sum(z))
   user  system elapsed 
   0.03    0.00    0.03
system.time(length(z[z==TRUE]))
   user  system elapsed 
   0.75    0.07    0.83 
system.time(length(which(z)))
   user  system elapsed 
   1.34    0.28    1.64 
system.time(table(z)["TRUE"])
   user  system elapsed 
  10.62    0.52   11.19 

So clearly using sum is the best approach in this case. You may also want to check for NA values as Marek suggested.

Just to add a note regarding NA values and the which function:

> which(c(T, F, NA, NULL, T, F))
[1] 1 4
> which(!c(T, F, NA, NULL, T, F))
[1] 2 5

Note that which only checks for logical TRUE, so it essentially ignores non-logical values.

Answer 2

which is good alternative, especially when you operate on matrices (check ?which and notice the arr.ind argument). But I suggest that you stick with sum, because of na.rm argument that can handle NA's in logical vector. For instance:

# create dummy variable
set.seed(100)
x <- round(runif(100, 0, 1))
x <- x == 1
# create NA's
x[seq(1, length(x), 7)] <- NA

If you type in sum(x) you'll get NA as a result, but if you pass na.rm = TRUE in sum function, you'll get the result that you want.

> sum(x)
[1] NA
> sum(x, na.rm=TRUE)
[1] 43

Is your question strictly theoretical, or you have some practical problem concerning logical vectors?