Fastest way to detect if vector has at least 1 NA?

Question

What is the fastest way to detect if a vector has at least 1 NA in R? I've been using:

sum( is.na( data ) ) > 0

But that requires examining each element, coercion, and the sum function.

Answer 1

You can use the anyNA() function that for atomic vectors will stop after the first NA is encountered instead of going through the whole vector. i.e

 x <- y <- runif(1e8)

 x[1e5] <- NA

 y[1e8] <- NA

 library("microbenchmark")

 

 

microbenchmark::microbenchmark(any(is.na(x)), anyNA(x), any(is.na(y)), anyNA(y), times=10)

Unit: microseconds

          expr        min         lq        mean      median         uq        max neval

 any(is.na(x)) 172072.058 175931.968 238283.1398 186712.6940 359786.850 379623.999    10

      anyNA(x)     88.178     94.152    100.8076     95.4315     98.987    142.507    10

 any(is.na(y)) 256447.358 258283.163 292296.5928 259401.8820 266702.432 446019.571    10

      anyNA(y)  91422.695  91562.641  98660.3245  92002.9610 102395.136 128808.355    10