#       
## Overview
A **factor** in R is used to categorize data. The corresponding values in a factor are referred to as the **items** of the factor. 

To access these factor items, we refer to their respective index number or position in the factor using square brackets `[]`.


> It is worth noting that the first character of an object in R has an index position of `1`. For example, the string `"Hello"` has its first character `H` as index `1`, the second character `e` has index position or number as `2`, and so on.
## Code


# creating a factor
Names <- factor(c("Theophilus", "Chidalu", "David", "Joseph"))

# printing the first item(index 1) of the factor
Names[1]

# priting the second item of the factor
Names[2]

## Explanation 
* Line 2: We create a factor object `Names` having 4 items.
* Line 5: We access and print the first item (index `1`) of the factor object `Names`.
* Line 8: We access and print the second item (index `2`) of the factor object `Names`.

> It is worth noting that the output `(Levels: Chidalu David Joseph Theophilus)` which comes after the accessed item(s) of the list represents the levels of the factor.

Interestingly we can use a `for` loop to also access the items of a factor
## Code


# creating a factor
Names <- factor(c("Theophilus", "Chidalu", "David", "Joseph"))

# using a for loop
for (index in 1:length(Names)){
    print(Names[index])
}

## Explanation
* Line 2: We create a factor object `Names` having 4 items.
* Line 5:  Using a `for` loop, we call the variable `index` to represents all the index position of all the items of the factor by using the `length()` function.

* Line 6: We print the variable `index` which represents all the items of the factor `Names`.

## Code


# creating a factor
Names <- factor(c("Theophilus", "Chidalu", "David", "Joseph"))

# using a for loop
for (Name in Names){
    print(Name)
}



## Explanation
* Line 2: We create a factor object `Names` having 4 items.
* Line 5:  Using a `for` loop, we use the variable `Name` to select of all the items one by one of the factor `Names`.

* Line 6: We print the variable `Name` which represents all the items of the factor `Names`.

How to access the items of a factor in R

A factor in R categorizes data; access items using square brackets. Indexing starts at one.