Ben Johnston spins in circles:
Welcome back to my R for SEO series. We’re in the home stretch now, with part seven. Today, we’re going to be looking at different ways that we can run functions or commands over a series of elements using the various kinds of loops that exist in R.
If you’ve followed along so far, or you’ve tried some experimentation of your own, you’ve probably encountered loops and applys along the way. I know early on in my R journey, it very much seemed like pot luck as to which apply I should use, or whether a loop was easier, so hopefully today’s piece will start to clear that up for you a little.
I know that most programming courses cover these elements earlier, but for me, it really didn’t click until I’d learned more about the other areas we’ve covered in this series, so that’s why I’ve placed it here.
Read on for examples of For loops and While loops, as well as breaking conditions.
Ben also talks about loops versus using the apply() series of functions (or equivalent map() functions in the purrr library). I tend to lean heavily on using the mapping function approach when there are no side effects, and use for loops when there are. H/T R-Bloggers.