Hi, If you truly have an array, this is option that should be much faster than a loop:
index <- which(is.na(dat)) dat[index] <- dat[index - 1] the only catch is that when there previous value is NA, you may have to go through the process a few times to get them all. One way to automate this would be: index <- which(is.na(dat)) while (any(index)) { dat[index] <- dat[index - 1] index <- which(is.na(dat)) } If your dataset has many adjacent missing values, then it would be worth it to use a fancier technique that looks for the first previous nonmissing value. There could even be a clever way with indexing that I am missing. HTH, Josh On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 5:13 AM, wuffmeister <hvem...@gmail.com> wrote: > I got an array similar to the one below, and want to replace all NAs with the > previous value. > 99 8.2 b > NA 8.3 x > NA 7.9 x > 98 8.1 b > NA 7.7 x > 99 9.3 b > ... > > i.e. the first two NAs should be replaced to 99, whereas the last one should > be 98. > > I would like to apply a function to reach row, checking if the value in col > 1 is NA, and if it is, set the value to the previous row's col 1 value. > > Haven't been able to do this without looping, which gets very slow for large > datasets... > > -- > View this message in context: > http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Replacing-values-without-looping-tp3602247p3602247.html > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Joshua Wiley Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology University of California, Los Angeles http://www.joshuawiley.com/ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.