4 Pipes | The tidyverse style guide (2024)

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4.1 Introduction

Use %>% to emphasise a sequence of actions, rather than the object that the actions are being performed on.

Avoid using the pipe when:

  • You need to manipulate more than one object at a time. Reserve pipes for asequence of steps applied to one primary object.

  • There are meaningful intermediate objects that could be giveninformative names.

4.2 Whitespace

%>% should always have a space before it, and should usually be followed by a new line. After the first step, each line should be indented by two spaces. This structure makes it easier to add new steps (or rearrange existing steps) and harder to overlook a step.

# Goodiris %>% group_by(Species) %>% summarize_if(is.numeric, mean) %>% ungroup() %>% gather(measure, value, -Species) %>% arrange(value)# Badiris %>% group_by(Species) %>% summarize_all(mean) %>%ungroup %>% gather(measure, value, -Species) %>%arrange(value)

4.3 Long lines

If the arguments to a function don’t all fit on one line, put each argument onits own line and indent:

iris %>% group_by(Species) %>% summarise( Sepal.Length = mean(Sepal.Length), Sepal.Width = mean(Sepal.Width), Species = n_distinct(Species) )

4.4 Short pipes

A one-step pipe can stay on one line, but unless you plan to expand it later on, you should consider rewriting it to a regular function call.

# Goodiris %>% arrange(Species)iris %>%  arrange(Species)arrange(iris, Species)

Sometimes it’s useful to include a short pipe as an argument to a function in alonger pipe. Carefully consider whether the code is more readable with a shortinline pipe (which doesn’t require a lookup elsewhere) or if it’s better to movethe code outside the pipe and give it an evocative name.

# Goodx %>% select(a, b, w) %>% left_join(y %>% select(a, b, v), by = c("a", "b"))# Betterx_join <- x %>% select(a, b, w)y_join <- y %>% select(a, b, v)left_join(x_join, y_join, by = c("a", "b"))

4.5 No arguments

magrittr allows you to omit () on functions that don’t have arguments. Avoid this feature.

# Goodx %>%  unique() %>% sort()# Badx %>%  unique %>% sort

4.6 Assignment

There are three acceptable forms of assignment:

  • Variable name and assignment on separate lines:

    iris_long <- iris %>% gather(measure, value, -Species) %>% arrange(-value)
  • Variable name and assignment on the same line:

    iris_long <- iris %>% gather(measure, value, -Species) %>% arrange(-value)
  • Assignment at the end of the pipe with ->:

    iris %>% gather(measure, value, -Species) %>% arrange(-value) -> iris_long

    I think this is the most natural to write, but makes reading a littleharder: when the name comes first, it can act as a heading to remindyou of the purpose of the pipe.

The magrittr package provides the %<>% operator as a shortcut for modifying an object in place. Avoid this operator.

# Goodx <- x %>%  abs() %>%  sort() # Badx %<>% abs() %>%  sort()

"The tidyverse style guide" was written by Hadley Wickham.

This book was built by the bookdown R package.

4 Pipes | The tidyverse style guide (2024)

FAQs

4 Pipes | The tidyverse style guide? ›

The %>% pipe is widely used for data manipulations and is automatically loaded with Tidyverse. The pipe operator is used to execute multiple operations that are in sequence requiring the output of the previous operation as their input argument.

What does %>% do in Tidyverse? ›

The %>% pipe is widely used for data manipulations and is automatically loaded with Tidyverse. The pipe operator is used to execute multiple operations that are in sequence requiring the output of the previous operation as their input argument.

Why would you want to use pipes instead of nested functions in R? ›

In short, here are four reasons why you should be using pipes in R: You'll structure the sequence of your data operations from left to right, as apposed to from inside and out; You'll avoid nested function calls; You'll minimize the need for local variables and function definitions; And.

How to use a function with pipe in R? ›

When the Pipe operator %>% is used in an R expression or function, it passes the left-hand side of the operator to the first argument of the right-hand side of the operator. For example, x %>% f(y) converted into f(x, y) so the result from left-hand side is then “piped” into the right-hand side.

What is the function of the R style guide? ›

The goal of the R Programming Style Guide is to make our R code easier to read, share, and verify. The Google R Style Guide is a fork of the Tidyverse Style Guide by Hadley Wickham license. Google modifications were developed in collaboration with the internal R user community.

What does %>% mean in R? ›

The pipe operator, written as %>% , is a longstanding feature of the magrittr package for R. It takes the output of one function and passes it into another function as an argument. This allows us to link a sequence of analysis steps.

What does %>% mean? ›

%>% is called the forward pipe operator in R. It provides a mechanism for chaining commands with a new forward-pipe operator, %>%. This operator will forward a value, or the result of an expression, into the next function call/expression.

Is it good practice to use nested functions? ›

If you stick to not nesting your functions you won't have to worry that the state inside your function is being changed from inside of a nested function. One disadvantage of declaring a nested function is the fact that it will be created inside function's environment every time you call the parent function.

What is the disadvantage of nested function? ›

Some Drawbacks of Using Python Nested Functions

Memory Overhead: Each nested function defined within an outer function creates a new closure that requires additional memory. This can become a problem if you have many nested functions defined within a single function.

Is nested functions a good thing? ›

When coding we want to hide immaterial detail. E.g. we mark functions as private as much as we can (well in python we can't really, so we use a leading underscore convention _like_this ). So that's a good reason to use nested functions — help the reader understand that the logic of bar will not be used anywhere else.

What are the advantages of pipe operator? ›

The pipe operator simply feeds the results of one operation into the next operation below it. The advantage of using the pipe operator is that it makes code extremely easy to read. The following examples show how to use the pipe operator in different scenarios with the built-in mtcars dataset in R.

How does pipe () work? ›

The pipe is used to combine two or more commands, and in this, the output of one command acts as input to another command, and this command's output may act as input to the next command, and so on. It can also be visualized as a temporary connection between two or more commands/ programs/ processes.

How do you use pipe in regular expression? ›

A pipe symbol allows regular expression components to be logically ORed. For example, the following regular expression matches lines that start with the word "Germany" or the word "Netherlands". Note that parentheses are used to group the two expressive components.

Why is style guide necessary? ›

The aim of a style guide is to ensure that multiple contributors work in a cohesive way to reflect your true corporate style and maintain brand consistency with everything from writing to design. Style guides support marketing initiatives by guaranteeing that all messaging is related to your company's goals.

Why would you use a style guide? ›

The purpose of a style guide is to make sure that multiple contributors create in a clear and cohesive way that reflects the corporate style and ensures brand consistency with everything from design to writing.

Why should you use a style guide? ›

The purpose of a style guide is to help ensure consistency across texts in terms of expression, presentation and referencing, despite these texts having different authors and editors.

What does double colon mean in R? ›

The double-colon operator :: selects definitions from a particular namespace. In the example above, the transpose function will always be available as base::t , because it is defined in the base package. Only functions that are exported from the package can be retrieved in this way.

What is the pipe symbol in R? ›

You can use the pipe operator (%>%) in R to “pipe” together a sequence of operations. This operator is most commonly used with the dplyr package in R to perform a sequence of operations on a data frame.

Is tidyverse worth learning? ›

For instance, tidyverse is often your best bet for quick and easy data manipulation. Grouping datasets by many variables to create summary statistics is much easier with packages like dplyr than with Base-R functions.

What function within the tidyverse package is enables you to do data manipulation such as selecting certain columns from a file? ›

To select columns of a data frame, use select() . The first argument to this function is the data frame ( surveys ), and the subsequent arguments are the columns to keep.

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