detectCharacterType: Function to detect whether a character is continuous or...

In treedata.table: Manipulation of Matched Phylogenies and Data using 'data.table'

Function to detect whether a character is continuous or discrete

Description

This function detects whether a given vector is a continuous (e.g., with values 2.45, 9.35, and so on) or a discrete (e.g., with values blue, red, yellow) character.

Usage

detectCharacterType(dat, cutoff = 0.1)

Arguments

dat	A vector of data
cutoff	Cutoff value for deciding if numeric data might actually be discrete: if nlev is the number of levels and n the length of dat, then nlev / n should exceed cutoff, or the data will be classified as discrete

Value

Either "discrete" or "continuous"

Examples

data(anolis)
detectCharacterType(anolis$dat[, 1])

treedata.table documentation built on Nov. 6, 2025, 1:14 a.m.