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How to use the switch statement in R functions?

Asked 2012-05-01T04:19:58.027
110

I would like to use for my function in R the statement switch() to trigger different computation according to the value of the function's argument.

For instance, in Matlab you can do that by writing 

switch(AA)        
case '1'   
...   
case '2'   
...   
case '3'  
...  
end

I found this post - switch() statement usage - that explain how to use switch, but not really helpful to me as I want to perform more sophisticated computation (matrix operations) and not a simple mean.

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1 Answer

54

I hope this example helps. You ca use the curly braces to make sure you've got everything enclosed in the switcher changer guy (sorry don't know the technical term but the term that precedes the = sign that changes what happens). I think of switch as a more controlled bunch of if () {} else {} statements.

Each time the switch function is the same but the command we supply changes.

do.this <- "T1"

switch(do.this,
    T1={X <- t(mtcars)
        colSums(mtcars)%*%X
    },
    T2={X <- colMeans(mtcars)
        outer(X, X)
    },
    stop("Enter something that switches me!")
)
#########################################################
do.this <- "T2"

switch(do.this,
    T1={X <- t(mtcars)
        colSums(mtcars)%*%X
    },
    T2={X <- colMeans(mtcars)
        outer(X, X)
    },
    stop("Enter something that switches me!")
)
########################################################
do.this <- "T3"

switch(do.this,
    T1={X <- t(mtcars)
        colSums(mtcars)%*%X
    },
    T2={X <- colMeans(mtcars)
        outer(X, X)
    },
    stop("Enter something that switches me!")
)

Here it is inside a function:

FUN <- function(df, do.this){
    switch(do.this,
        T1={X <- t(df)
            P <- colSums(df)%*%X
        },
        T2={X <- colMeans(df)
            P <- outer(X, X)
        },
        stop("Enter something that switches me!")
    )
    return(P)
}

FUN(mtcars, "T1")
FUN(mtcars, "T2")
FUN(mtcars, "T3")
answered 2012-05-01T04:30:32.460

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