In order to complement the answer of cantdutchthis and Rodrigo Remedio;
moving_fun <- function(x, w, FUN, ...) {
# x: a double vector
# w: the length of the window, i.e., the section of the vector selected to apply FUN
# FUN: a function that takes a vector and return a summarize value, e.g., mean, sum, etc.
# Given a double type vector apply a FUN over a moving window from left to the right,
# when a window boundary is not a legal section, i.e. lower_bound and i (upper bound)
# are not contained in the length of the vector, return a NA_real_
if (w < 1) {
stop("The length of the window 'w' must be greater than 0")
}
output <- x
for (i in 1:length(x)) {
# plus 1 because the index is inclusive with the upper_bound 'i'
lower_bound <- i - w + 1
if (lower_bound < 1) {
output[i] <- NA_real_
} else {
output[i] <- FUN(x[lower_bound:i, ...])
}
}
output
}
# example
v <- seq(1:10)
# compute a MA(2)
moving_fun(v, 2, mean)
# compute moving sum of two periods
moving_fun(v, 2, sum)