santoku is a versatile cutting tool for R. It provides chop() , a replacement for base::cut() .

Advantages

Here are some advantages of santoku:

By default, chop() always covers the whole range of the data, so you won’t get unexpected NA values.

chop() can handle single values as well as intervals. For example, chop(x, breaks = c(1, 2, 2, 3)) will create a separate factor level for values exactly equal to 2.

Flexible labelling, including easy ways to label intervals by numerals or letters.

Convenience functions for creating quantile intervals, evenly-spaced intervals or equal-sized groups.

Convenience functions for quickly tabulating chopped data.

These advantages make santoku especially useful for exploratory analysis, where you may not know the range of your data in advance.