Hi,
Is nchar function knowingly slow in R? I'm doing some string
formatting that requires multiple call to nchar, and nchar seems to be
very slow.
Experiment 1, pass nchar inside sprintf, and it takes 0.7 seconds
> system.time(for (i in 1:10000)
+ str = sprintf('0005%020d', nchar(op))
+ )[3]
[1] 0.7
Experiment 2, get the length of op separately using nchar, and then pass
the value to sprintf.
> len = nchar(op)
> system.time(for (i in 1:10000)
+ str = sprintf('0005%020d', len)
+ )[3]
[1] 0.03
Experiment 3, time nchar for 10000 iterations
> system.time(for (i in 1:10000)
+ nchar(op)
+ )[3]
[1] 0.66
Is there any faster way of getting the length of string in R?
Thank you in advance for your help!
Sincerely,
Jennifer