A curated list of amazingly awesome R vector classes, and the packages that provide them.

Please read CONTRIBUTING if you wish to add a new vector class.

• Awesome VectoRs
  • Contributing
  • Table of Contents
  • Base
  • Numbers
  • Date and time
  • Strings
  • Compound
  • Computing
  • Geospatial
  • Internal
• Resources
  • Books
  • Repositories
  • Blog posts
  • Talks
  • License

Classes provided by base R.

• character - Strings: "a"
• hexmode - Hexadecimal numbers: 2A
• integer - 32-bit integers: 1
• numeric - Floating-point numbers: 1.234567
• numeric_version - Software versions: '1.23.456'
• octmode - Octal numbers: 52
• POSIXct - Calendar time with time zone, stored as days since epoch: 2020-03-03 09:16:17 CET
• POSIXlt - Calendar time with time zone, stored as record of components: 2020-03-03 09:16:17 CET

Classes that wrap numbers.

• bigfloat - High precision numbers: 0.33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333
• biginteger - Arbitrary precision integers: 25852016738884976640000
• errors - Numbers with uncertainty: 1 ± 0.3
• fracture - Fractions: 1/3
• nombre - Number names: one
• num - Numbers with formatting: 1.00
• quantities - Numbers with units and uncertainty: 1 ± 0.3 [m/s]
• units - Numbers with units: 1 [m/s]

Classes that wrap dates and times.

• aweek - Weeks that start on any day of the week: 2020-W10-2
• calendar - Alternative representations of calendar dates, such as year-quarter-day or year-month-weekday: 2019-02-Sun[2]
• date_y, date_yq, date_ym, date_yw - Years, year-quarter, year-month and year-week: 2020-Q1
• hms - Time of day: 12:34:56
• term - Represent ordinal academic semesters: 20164
• time_point - Variable precision points in time, with and without time zones: "2020-02-01 02:03:04.000005"
• yearquarter, yearmonth, yearweek - Year-quarter, year-month and year-week: 2021 Oct
• yr - Year-based time scales: 4.2 ka

Classes that wrap character strings.

• char - Strings with minimum width and custom abbreviation: abc…xyz

Classes that wrap complex objects.

• blob - Binary Large OBjects: blob[42 B]
• doi - Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs): 10.1000/1
• intrval - Relational operators for intervals: x %[]% c(a, b)
• iv - Interval vectors: [2019-01-05, 2019-05-06) [2019-01-06, 2019-05-22)
• labelled - Labelled vectors: <Labelled double> 3 with labels
• mixed_units - Numbers with different units: 1 [m], 2 [kg]
• phone - Phone numbers parsed with Google's libphonenumber for formatting and further processing: # Parsed phone numbers: 5 total, 4 successfully parsed
• term - Labels for values in numeric objects: beta[1,2]

Classes related to computing

• ip_address - IP address: 192.168.0.1
• ip_interface - IP interface: 192.168.0.1/24
• ip_network - IP network: 192.168.0.0/24

Classes related to geospatial

• crc - Circle: [1 2, r = 0.5]
• geos_geometry - Geometry vector as GEOS external pointers: <POINT (0 1)>
• rct - Rectangle: [1 2 3 4]
• s2_geography, s2_cell - Geometry vector of points on the sphere as external pointers to S2 objects, S2 cell IDs as 64-bit integers: <POINT (0 1)>
• sfc - Geometry vector in spatial data frames: POINT (0 1)
• wkb - Well-known binary geometry: <POINT (0 1)>
• wkt - Well-known text geometry: POINT (0 1)
• xy - Points: (1 4)

Classes implemented by packages for their own use

• tokenlist - List of tokens: [3 tokens] with number of unique tokens

• Advanced R by Hadley Wickham

• vctrs: simplifies creating vector classes

• Earo Wang: A practical guide to vctrs-powered S3 programming: using vctrs for turtle graphics

• Jesse Sadler, vctrs: Creating custom vector classes with the vctrs package at RStudio::conf2020 with the companion tutorial debvctrs

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