Concatenate Vector of Character Strings in R

In this article, we will discuss how to concatenate the strings present in two or more vectors in R Programming Language. 

Discussed below are various methods of doing so.

Method 1: Using paste()

paste() function is used to combine strings present in vectors passed to it  an argument.

Syntax: paste(vector1,vector2,.,vector n,sep="symbol")

Parameter:

• vectors are the input vectors to be concatenate
• sep is the separator symbol that separates the strings present in the vector.

Example 1:

Output:

[1] "manoj--vijayawada" "sravan--ponnur"    "harsha--hyd" 

Example 2:

Output:

[1] "manoj--vijayawada--java--iit--cse" 
[2] "sravan--ponnur--.net--srm-ap--food tech"
[3] "harsha--hyd--python--vignan--ece" 

Without a separator, the vectors will combine without any space or any symbol.

Example 3:

Output:

[1] "manoj vijayawada java iit cse"       "sravan ponnur .net srm-ap food tech"

[3] "harsha hyd python vignan ece"    

Method 2: Using cbind()

cbind() function is used to combine the vectors column-wise i.e. it places the first vector in the first column and second vector in column 2 and so on.

Syntax: cbind(x1, x2, …, deparse.level = 1)

Parameters:
x1, x2: vector, matrix, data frames
deparse.level: This value determines how the column names generated. The default value of deparse.level is 1.

Example:

Output:

              a                 b           d        e        f          

[1,] "manoj"  "vijayawada" "java"   "iit"    "cse"      

[2,] "sravan" "ponnur"     ".net"   "srm-ap" "food tech"

[3,] "harsha" "hyd"        "python" "vignan" "ece"      

Method 3: Using rbind() 

rbind() concatenates the strings of vectors row-wise i.e. row 1 is for vector 1, row2 is vector 2, and so on.

Syntax: rbind(x1, x2, …, deparse.level = 1)

Parameters:
x1, x2: vector, matrix, data frames
deparse.level: This value determines how the column names generated. The default value of deparse.level is 1.

Example:

Output:

 [,1] [,2] [,3] 
a "manoj" "sravan" "harsha"
b "vijayawada" "ponnur" "hyd" 
d "java" ".net" "python"
e "iit" "srm-ap" "vignan"
f "cse" "food tech" "ece" 

Method 4: Using cat() 

cat() function is used to concatenate the given vectors.

Syntax:

cat(vector1,vector2,.,vector n)

Where, the vector is the input vector

It results in a one-dimensional vector with the last value as NULL

Example 1:

Output:

manoj sravan harsha vijayawada ponnur hydNULL

Example 2:

Output:

manoj sravan harsha vijayawada ponnur hyd 1 2 3 4 5 1.6 2.2 3.78 4.4456 5.4NULL