In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the most important operators in R – briefly, clearly, and with examples you can try out right away.
Comparison operators: Is it equal? Greater? Less?
In R, you can use special characters to check whether two values are related to each other. Here are the most important ones:
| Operator | Meaning | Example | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
== | equal | 5 == 5 | TRUE |
!= | not equal | 5 != 6 | TRUE |
> | greater than | 7 > 5 | TRUE |
< | less than | 3 < 2 | FALSE |
>= | greater than or equal to | 4 >= 4 | TRUE |
<= | less than or equal to | 2 <= 1 | FALSE |
These operators always return either TRUE or FALSE — these are known as logical values, which you can continue working with.
Logical operators: AND, OR, NOT
R wouldn’t be R if you couldn’t also combine conditions. That’s what logical operators are for:
| Operator | Meaning | Example | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
& | AND | 5 > 3 & 2 < 4 | TRUE |
| ` | ` | OR | 5 < 3 | 2 < 4 |
! | NOT | !(5 == 5) | FALSE |
Important: With & and |, the comparison is performed element by element. There are also && and ||, which only check the first element — this is more relevant for if statements.
Applying them to vectors
What makes R special: You can apply these operators directly to vectors. Example:
x <- c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
x > 3
This results in:
[1] FALSE FALSE FALSE TRUE TRUE
So you get a vector back indicating which elements are greater than 3.
Even more useful: you can use this for filtering!
x[x > 3]
# Result: 4 5
This makes it easy to extract specific values from a dataset.
Modulo
The modulo operator (%%) returns the remainder of a division.
9%%2
# Result: 1
Conclusion
With these operators, you can already do a lot in R — whether you’re comparing values, formulating conditions, or filtering datasets. Here’s an overview once again:
✅ Comparison operators: ==, !=, <, >, <=, >=
✅ Logical operators: &, |, !
✅ Also works with vectors!