R - not equal operator example

The example below shows the usage of not equal(!=) operator in different scenarios.

Comparing with a scalar

If a vector or a matrix is compared with a scalar (single element atomic vector), it acts on each element of it and returns TRUE if the element is not equal to the scalar, else returns FALSE.

#first operand
x1 <- 10
v1 <- c(10, 20, 10)
m1 <- matrix(c(10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 10), nrow=2)

#second operand
x2 <- 10

#comparing two scalars
print(x1 != x2)
#comparing a vector with a scalar
print(v1 != x2)
#comparing a matrix with a scalar
cat("\n")
print(m1 != x2)

The output of the above code will be:

[1] FALSE
[1] FALSE  TRUE FALSE

      [,1] [,2]  [,3]
[1,] FALSE TRUE  TRUE
[2,]  TRUE TRUE FALSE

Comparing with a vector

When two vectors are compared, their length should be same or length of longer vector should be multiple of length of shorter vector. Similarly, when a vector is compared with a matrix, the length of longer object should be multiple of length of shorter object.

Please note that, When a vector is compared with a matrix, elements are compared column-wise.

#first operand
x1 <- 10
v1 <- c(10, 20, 10)
m1 <- matrix(c(10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 10), nrow=2)

#second operand
v2 <- c(10, 20, 30)

#comparing a scalar (single element 
#atomic vector) with a vector
print(x1 != v2)
#comparing two vectors
print(v1 != v2)
#comparing a matrix with a vector
cat("\n")
print(m1 != v2)

The output of the above code will be:

[1] FALSE  TRUE  TRUE
[1] FALSE FALSE  TRUE

      [,1]  [,2] [,3]
[1,] FALSE FALSE TRUE
[2,] FALSE  TRUE TRUE

Comparing with a matrix

When two matrices are compared, their dimension should be same or dimension of bigger matrix should be multiple of dimension of smaller matrix.

#first operand
x1 <- 10
v1 <- c(10, 20, 10)
m1 <- matrix(c(10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 10), nrow=2)

#second operand
m2 <- matrix(c(10, 20, 30, 10, 20, 30), nrow=2)

#comparing a scalar (single element 
#atomic vector) with a matrix
print(x1 != m2)
#comparing a vector with a matrix
cat("\n")
print(v1 != m2)
#comparing two matrices
cat("\n")
print(m1 != m2)

The output of the above code will be:

      [,1]  [,2] [,3]
[1,] FALSE  TRUE TRUE
[2,]  TRUE FALSE TRUE

      [,1]  [,2]  [,3]
[1,] FALSE  TRUE FALSE
[2,] FALSE FALSE  TRUE

      [,1]  [,2] [,3]
[1,] FALSE FALSE TRUE
[2,] FALSE  TRUE TRUE

❮ R - Operators