extract.range = function(v) { r <- c(1, which(diff(v) != 1) + 1, length(v) + 1) paste0(collapse=",", v[head(r, -1)], ifelse(diff(r) == 1, "", paste0(ifelse(diff(r) == 2, ",", "-"), v[r[-1] - 1]))) } print(extract.range(c( -6, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20))) print(extract.range(c( 0, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39)))