Compare two character vectors in R

I have two character vectors of IDs.

I would like to compare the two character vectors, in particular I am interested in the following figures:

• How many IDs are both in A and B
• How many IDs are in A but not in B
• How many IDs are in B but not in A

I would also love to draw a Venn diagram.

Solution 1:

Here are some basics to try out:

> A = c("Dog", "Cat", "Mouse")
> B = c("Tiger","Lion","Cat")
> A %in% B
[1] FALSE  TRUE FALSE
> intersect(A,B)
[1] "Cat"
> setdiff(A,B)
[1] "Dog"   "Mouse"
> setdiff(B,A)
[1] "Tiger" "Lion" 

Similarly, you could get counts simply as:

> length(intersect(A,B))
[1] 1
> length(setdiff(A,B))
[1] 2
> length(setdiff(B,A))
[1] 2

Solution 2:

I'm usually dealing with large-ish sets, so I use a table instead of a Venn diagram:

xtab_set <- function(A,B){
    both    <-  union(A,B)
    inA     <-  both %in% A
    inB     <-  both %in% B
    return(table(inA,inB))
}

set.seed(1)
A <- sample(letters[1:20],10,replace=TRUE)
B <- sample(letters[1:20],10,replace=TRUE)
xtab_set(A,B)

#        inB
# inA     FALSE TRUE
#   FALSE     0    5
#   TRUE      6    3

Solution 3:

Yet an another way, with using %in% and boolean vectors of common elements instead of intersect and setdiff. I take it you actually want to compare two vectors, not two lists - a list is an R class that may contain any type of element, while vectors always contain elements of just one type, hence easier comparison of what is truly equal. Here the elements are transformed to character strings, as that was the most inflexible element type that was present.

first <- c(1:3, letters[1:6], "foo", "bar")
second <- c(2:4, letters[5:8], "bar", "asd")

both <- first[first %in% second] # in both, same as call: intersect(first, second)
onlyfirst <- first[!first %in% second] # only in 'first', same as: setdiff(first, second)
onlysecond <- second[!second %in% first] # only in 'second', same as: setdiff(second, first)
length(both)
length(onlyfirst)
length(onlysecond)

#> both
#[1] "2"   "3"   "e"   "f"   "bar"
#> onlyfirst
#[1] "1"   "a"   "b"   "c"   "d"   "foo"
#> onlysecond
#[1] "4"   "g"   "h"   "asd"
#> length(both)
#[1] 5
#> length(onlyfirst)
#[1] 6
#> length(onlysecond)
#[1] 4

# If you don't have the 'gplots' package, type: install.packages("gplots")
require("gplots")
venn(list(first.vector = first, second.vector = second))

Like it was mentioned, there are multiple choices for plotting Venn-diagrams in R. Here is the output using gplots.