[R] length of empty string

[R. Michael Weylandt <michael.weylandt@gmail.com>]

Because it's a character vector with only one element, which just happens to be empty - sort of like why the cardinality of the set { /O } is one. (/O being my best shot at the empty set symbol in plain text). 

You might be thinking of nchar(). 

Michael

On Nov 18, 2011, at 10:09 AM, "Jaensch, Steffen [TIBBE]" <SJAENSCH at its.jnj.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
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> 
> Can somebody explain why length("") returns 1 and not 0? How do I test
> if a given string is the empty string?
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> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Steffen.
> 
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