How to remove last few rows from an R data frame?

An R data frame can contain a very large number of rows and we might want to get rid of some rows if they’re not supposed to be helpful in our data analysis. Therefore, we can remove these rows prior to starting the analysis process. We can say that this removal of some rows is a part of data cleaning and obviously data cleaning helps us creating a smooth data set for analysis. In R, we can simply use head function to remove last few rows from an R data frame, also we can store them as a new data frame if we want to but I will just show you how to remove the rows and you can assign a object name to the new df if you feel so.

Example

Consider the below data frame −

 Live Demo

set.seed(111)
x1<-rnorm(20,2)
x2<-LETTERS[1:20]
x3<-rep(c("L1","L2","L3","L4"),times=5)
x4<-rpois(20,5)
x5<-sample(1:1000,20)
df<-data.frame(x1,x2,x3,x4,x5)
df

Output

x1 x2 x3 x4 x5
1 2.2352207 A L1 6 61
2 1.6692641 B L2 4 893
3 1.6883762 C L3 6 91
4 -0.3023457 D L4 8 605
5 1.8291240 E L1 5 855
6 2.1402782 F L2 4 864
7 0.5025733 G L3 4 373
8 0.9898116 H L4 7 493
9 1.0515244 I L1 6 769
10 1.5060378 J L2 7 252
11 1.8263259 K L3 6 170
12 1.5934012 L L4 5 592
13 3.8456363 M L1 1 42
14 2.3940541 N L2 4 423
15 2.7975285 O L3 12 388
16 0.4333346 P L4 5 308
17 1.9141490 Q L1 5 113
18 1.6408605 R L2 5 998
19 0.8063910 S L3 2 310
20 2.3641867 T L4 7 687

Example

head(df,-5)

Output

x1 x2 x3 x4 x5
1 2.2352207 A L1 6 61
2 1.6692641 B L2 4 893
3 1.6883762 C L3 6 91
4 -0.3023457 D L4 8 605
5 1.8291240 E L1 5 855
6 2.1402782 F L2 4 864
7 0.5025733 G L3 4 373
8 0.9898116 H L4 7 493
9 1.0515244 I L1 6 769
10 1.5060378 J L2 7 252
11 1.8263259 K L3 6 170
12 1.5934012 L L4 5 592
13 3.8456363 M L1 1 42
14 2.3940541 N L2 4 423
15 2.7975285 O L3 12 388

Example

head(df,-2)

Output

x1 x2 x3 x4 x5
1 2.2352207 A L1 6 61
2 1.6692641 B L2 4 893
3 1.6883762 C L3 6 91
4 -0.3023457 D L4 8 605
5 1.8291240 E L1 5 855
6 2.1402782 F L2 4 864
7 0.5025733 G L3 4 373
8 0.9898116 H L4 7 493
9 1.0515244 I L1 6 769
10 1.5060378 J L2 7 252
11 1.8263259 K L3 6 170
12 1.5934012 L L4 5 592
13 3.8456363 M L1 1 42
14 2.3940541 N L2 4 423
15 2.7975285 O L3 12 388
16 0.4333346 P L4 5 308
17 1.9141490 Q L1 5 113
18 1.6408605 R L2 5 998

Example

head(df,-10)

Output

x1 x2 x3 x4 x5
1 2.2352207 A L1 6 61
2 1.6692641 B L2 4 893
3 1.6883762 C L3 6 91
4 -0.3023457 D L4 8 605
5 1.8291240 E L1 5 855
6 2.1402782 F L2 4 864
7 0.5025733 G L3 4 373
8 0.9898116 H L4 7 493
9 1.0515244 I L1 6 769
10 1.5060378 J L2 7 252

Example

head(df,-8)

Output

x1 x2 x3 x4 x5
1 2.2352207 A L1 6 61
2 1.6692641 B L2 4 893
3 1.6883762 C L3 6 91
4 -0.3023457 D L4 8 605
5 1.8291240 E L1 5 855
6 2.1402782 F L2 4 864
7 0.5025733 G L3 4 373
8 0.9898116 H L4 7 493
9 1.0515244 I L1 6 769
10 1.5060378 J L2 7 252
11 1.8263259 K L3 6 170
12 1.5934012 L L4 5 592

Example

head(df,-15)

Output

x1 x2 x3 x4 x5
1 2.2352207 A L1 6 61
2 1.6692641 B L2 4 893
3 1.6883762 C L3 6 91
4 -0.3023457 D L4 8 605
5 1.8291240 E L1 5 855

Example

head(df,-4)

Output

x1 x2 x3 x4 x5
1 2.2352207 A L1 6 61
2 1.6692641 B L2 4 893
3 1.6883762 C L3 6 91
4 -0.3023457 D L4 8 605
5 1.8291240 E L1 5 855
6 2.1402782 F L2 4 864
7 0.5025733 G L3 4 373
8 0.9898116 H L4 7 493
9 1.0515244 I L1 6 769
10 1.5060378 J L2 7 252
11 1.8263259 K L3 6 170
12 1.5934012 L L4 5 592
13 3.8456363 M L1 1 42
14 2.3940541 N L2 4 423
15 2.7975285 O L3 12 388
16 0.4333346 P L4 5 308