What is the pmax() function in R?

Overview

The pmax() function in R obtains the parallel maxima of two or more given vectors. In simpler words, the function compares the values of the two vectors in pairs and returns a final vector that contains the maximum values from each pair.

Syntax

pmax(..., na.rm = FALSE)
Syntax for the pmax() function in R

Parameters

The pmax() function takes the following parameter values:

  • ...: This represents the vector objects. It is a required parameter.
  • na.rm: This takes a logical value (TRUE or FALSE) that indicates whether the function should remove missing values. It is an optional parameter.

Return value

The pmax() function returns a vector with the longest of the input vectors representing the pair-wise maxima of the input vectors.

Example

# Creating a vector

a <- c(10, 8, 3, 9, 0, 5)

b <- c(15, 4, 6, 9, 8, 4)



# Obtaining the maximum values pair-wise

pmax(a, b)

Explanation

  • Lines 2–3: We create vector objects a and b.
  • Line 6: We call the pmax() function and pass our input vectors (a and b) to it. The function returns our desired vector (The maximum values from each pairing).

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