r - Check if any value in a data.frame column is null

Question

I am trying to see if the data.frame column has any null values to move to the next loop. I am currently using the code below:

if (is.na(df[,relevant_column]) == TRUE ){next}

which spits out the warning:

In if (is.na(df_cell_client[, numerator]) == TRUE) { ... : the condition has length > 1 and only the first element will be used

How do I check if any of the values are null and not just the first row?

Answer 1

(I assume by "null" you really mean NA , since a data.frame cannot contain NULL in that sense.)

Your problem is that if expects a single logical, but is.na(df[,relevant_column]) is returning a vector of logicals. any reduces a vector of logicals into a single global "or" of the vector: Try:

if (any(is.na(df[,relevant_column]))) {next}

BTW: == TRUE is unnecessary. Keep it if you feel you want the clarity in your code, but I think you'll find most R code does not use that. (I've also seen something == FALSE , equally "odd/wrong", where ! something should work ... but I digress.)