The symbol NA
is for a logical
missing value:
class(NA)
#[1] "logical"
This is convenient, since it can easily be coerced to other atomic vector types, and is therefore usually the only NA
you will need:
x <- c(1, NA, 1)
class(x[2])
#[1] "numeric"
If you do need a single NA
value of another type, use NA_character_
, NA_integer_
, NA_real_
or NA_complex_
. For missing values of fancy classes, subsetting with NA_integer_
usually works; for example, to get a missing-value Date:
class(Sys.Date()[NA_integer_])
# [1] "Date"