R match between two comma-separated strings - regex

Question

I am trying to find an elegant way to find matches between the two following character columns in a data frame. The complicated part is that either string can contain a comma-separated list, and if a member of one list is a match for any member of the other list, then that whole entry would be considered a match. I'm not sure how well I've explained this, so here's sample data and output:
Alt1:
AT
A
G
CGTCC,AT
CGC
Alt2:
AA
A
GG
AT,GGT
CG
Expected Match per row:
Row 1 = none
Row 2 = A
Row 3 = none
Row 4 = AT
Row 5 = none
Non-working solutions:
First attempt: merge entire data frames by desired columns, then match up the alt columns shown above:
match1 = data.frame(merge(vcf.df, ref.df, by=c("chr", "start", "end", "ref")))
matches = unique(match1[unlist(sapply(match1$Alt1 grep, match1$Alt2, fixed=TRUE)),])
Second method, using findoverlaps feature from VariantAnnoatation/Granges:
findoverlaps(ranges(vcf1), ranges(vcf2))
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Solution
Thanks to #Marat Talipov's answer below, the following solution works to compare two comma-separated strings:
> ##read in edited kaviar vcf and human ref
> ref <- readVcfAsVRanges("ref.vcf.gz", humie_ref)
Warning message:
In .vcf_usertag(map, tag, ...) :
ScanVcfParam ‘geno’ fields not present: ‘AD’
> ##rename chromosomes to match with vcf files
> ref <- renameSeqlevels(ref, c("1"="chr1"))
> ##################################
> ## Gather VCF files to process ##
> ##################################
> ##data frame *.vcf.gz files in directory path
> vcf_path <- data.frame(path=list.files(vcf_dir, pattern="*.vcf.gz$", full=TRUE))
> ##read in everything but sample data for speediness
> vcf_param = ScanVcfParam(samples=NA)
> vcf <- readVcfAsVRanges("test.vcf.gz", humie_ref, param=vcf_param)
> #################
> ## Match SNP's ##
> #################
> ##create data frames of info to match on
> vcf.df = data.frame(chr =as.character(seqnames(vcf)), start = start(vcf), end = end(vcf), ref = as.character(ref(vcf)),
+ alt=alt(vcf), stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
> ref.df = data.frame(chr =as.character(seqnames(ref)), start = start(ref), end = end(ref),
+ ref = as.character(ref(ref)), alt=alt(ref), stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
>
> ##merge based on all positional fields except vcf
> col_match = data.frame(merge(vcf.df, ref.df, by=c("chr", "start", "end", "ref")))
> library(stringi)
> ##split each alt column by comma and bind together
> M1 <- stri_list2matrix(sapply(col_match$alt.x,strsplit,','))
> M2 <- stri_list2matrix(sapply(col_match$alt.y,strsplit,','))
> M <- rbind(M1,M2)
> ##compare results
> result <- apply(M,2,function(z) unique(na.omit(z[duplicated(z)])))
> ##add results column to col_match df for checking/subsetting
> col_match$match = result
> head(col_match)
chr start end ref alt.x alt.y match
1 chr1 39998059 39998059 A G G G
2 chr1 39998059 39998059 A G G G
3 chr1 39998084 39998084 C A A A
4 chr1 39998084 39998084 C A A A
5 chr1 39998085 39998085 G A A A
6 chr1 39998085 39998085 G A A A

Answer 1

In the case that input lists are of equal length and you'd like to compare list elements in the pairwise manner, you could use this solution:
library(stringi)
M1 <- stri_list2matrix(sapply(Alt1,strsplit,','))
M2 <- stri_list2matrix(sapply(Alt2,strsplit,','))
M <- rbind(M1,M2)
result <- apply(M,2,function(z) unique(na.omit(z[duplicated(z)])))
Sample input:
Alt1 <- list('AT','A','G','CGTCC,AT','CGC','GG,CC')
Alt2 <- list('AA','A','GG','AT,GGT','CG','GG,CC')
Output:
# [[1]]
# character(0)
#
# [[2]]
# [1] "A"
#
# [[3]]
# character(0)
#
# [[4]]
# [1] "AT"
#
# [[5]]
# character(0)
#
# [[6]]
# [1] "GG" "CC"

Answer 2

Sticking with the stringi package, you could do something like this, using the Alt1 and Alt2 data from Marat's answer.
library(stringi)
f <- function(x, y) {
ssf <- stri_split_fixed(c(x, y), ",", simplify = TRUE)
if(any(sd <- stri_duplicated(ssf))) ssf[sd] else NA_character_
}
Map(f, Alt1, Alt2)
# [[1]]
# [1] NA
#
# [[2]]
# [1] "A"
#
# [[3]]
# [1] NA
#
# [[4]]
# [1] "AT"
#
# [[5]]
# [1] NA
#
# [[6]]
# [1] "GG" "CC"
Or in base R, we can use scan() to separate the strings with commas.
g <- function(x, y, sep = ",") {
s <- scan(text = c(x, y), what = "", sep = sep, quiet = TRUE)
s[duplicated(s)]
}
Map(g, Alt1, Alt2)

Answer 3

you could do something like this:
Alt1 <- list('AT','A','G',c('CGTCC','AT'),'CGC')
Alt2 <- list('AA','A','GG',c('AT','GGT'),'CG')
# make sure you change the lists within in the lists into vectors
matchlist <- list()
for (i in 1:length(Alt1)){
matchlist[[i]] <- ifelse(Alt1[[i]] %in% Alt2[[i]],
paste("Row",i,"=",c(Alt1[[i]],Alt2[[i]])[duplicated(c(Alt1[[i]],Alt2[[i]]))],sep=" "),
paste("Row",i,"= none",sep=" "))
}
print(matchlist)