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Github developmental version of magrittr includes some cool new function for piping but I do not exactly catch de difference between %>% and %,%. Is this only formal with %>% for value and %,% for functions, or there is some specific peculiarity?

Gabor Csardi
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BBrill
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1 Answers1

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The normal piping operator is %>%. You can use %,% to create a reusable pipe, a pipe without data. Then later you can use the same pipe with various data sets. Here is an example.

library(magrittr)
library(dplyr)
library(Lahman)

Suppose you want to calculate the top 5 baseball players, according to total hits. Then you can do something like this (taken from the magrittr README):

Batting %>%
   group_by(playerID) %>%
   summarise(total = sum(G)) %>%
   arrange(desc(total)) %>%
   head(5)
# Source: local data frame [5 x 2]
# 
#    playerID total
# 1  rosepe01  3562
# 2 yastrca01  3308
# 3 aaronha01  3298
# 4 henderi01  3081
# 5  cobbty01  3035

So far so good. Now let's assume that you have several data sets in the same format as Batting, so you could just reuse the same pipe again. %,% helps you create, save and reuse the pipe:

top_total <- group_by(playerID) %,%
   summarise(total = sum(G)) %,%
   arrange(desc(total)) %,%
   head(5)

top_total(Batting)
# Source: local data frame [5 x 2]
# 
#    playerID total
# 1  rosepe01  3562
# 2 yastrca01  3308
# 3 aaronha01  3298
# 4 henderi01  3081
# 5  cobbty01  3035

Of course you could also create a function the regular R way, i.e. top_total <- function(...) ..., but %,% is a more concise way.

Gabor Csardi
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  • Indeed the way with function was the one I used before. Thank you! – BBrill Aug 09 '14 at 08:23
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    Note that this functionality never made it to CRAN is now done with a `.` placeholder: `top_total <- . %>% group_by(playerID) %>% summarise(total = sum(G)) %>% arrange(desc(total)) %>% head(5)` – Axeman Sep 20 '16 at 09:16