Paste, Paste0 and Sprintf

Three ways to simply paste characters or URLs by using the paste, paste0 and sprintf functions.

x<-"a"
y<-"b"

#paste
paste(x,y)
[1] "a b"

#paste0
paste0(x,y)
[1] "ab"

#paste current working directory to /output/results/
paste0(getwd(),"/output/results")
[1] "C:/Users/Kuan/output/results"

#sprintf
file <-"test.xls"
action <-"read and written"
user<-"Kuan Hoong"
message(sprintf("On %s, the file \"%s\" was %s by %s", Sys.Date(), file, action, user))

On 2016-11-07, the file "test.xls" was read and written by Kuan Hoong

It is easier to use paste0 or paste instead of sprintf as you don’t need to think about the types of arguments being passed.