I am not familiar at all with regular expressions, and would like to do pattern matching and replacement in R.
I would like to replace the pattern #1, #2 in the vector: original = c("#1", "#2", "#10", "#11") with each value of the vector vec = c(1,2).
The result I am looking for is the following vector: c("1", "2", "#10", "#11")
I am not sure how to do that. I tried doing:
for(i in 1:2) {
pattern = paste("#", i, sep = "")
original = gsub(pattern, vec[i], original, fixed = TRUE)
}
but I get :
#> original
#[1] "1" "2" "10" "11"
instead of: "1" "2" "#10" "#11"
I would appreciate any help I can get! Thank you!
Specify that you are matching the entire string from start (^) to end ($).
Here, I've matched exactly the conditions you are looking at in this example, but I'm guessing you'll need to extend it:
> gsub("^#([1-2])$", "\\1", original)
[1] "1" "2" "#10" "#11"
So, that's basically, "from the start, look for a hash symbol followed by either the exact number one or two. The one or two should be just one digit (that's why we don't use * or + or something) and also ends the string. Oh, and capture that one or two because we want to 'backreference' it."
Another option using gsubfn:
library(gsubfn)
gsubfn("^#([1-2])$", I, original) ## Function substituting
[1] "1" "2" "#10" "#11"
Or if you want to explicitly use the values of your vector , using vec values:
gsubfn("^#[1-2]$", as.list(setNames(vec,c("#1", "#2"))), original)
Or formula notation equivalent to function notation:
gsubfn("^#([1-2])$", ~ x, original) ## formula substituting
Here's a slightly different take that uses zero width negative lookahead assertion (what a mouthful!). This is the (?!...) which matches # at the start of a string as long as it is not followed by whatever is in .... In this case two (or equivalently, more as long as they are contiguous) digits. It replaces them with nothing.
gsub( "^#(?![0-9]{2})" , "" , original , perl = TRUE )
[1] "1" "2" "#10" "#11"
Related
I have a dataframe column including pages paths :
pagePath
/text/other_text/123-some_other_txet-4571/text.html
/text/other_text/another_txet/15-some_other_txet.html
/text/other_text/25189-some_other_txet/45112-text.html
/text/other_text/text/text/5418874-some_other_txet.html
/text/other_text/text/text/some_other_txet-4157/text.html
What I want to do is to extract the first number after a /, for example 123 from each row.
To solve this problem, I tried the following :
num = gsub("\\D"," ", mydata$pagePath) /*to delete all characters other than digits */
num1 = gsub("\\s+"," ",num) /*to let only one space between numbers*/
num2 = gsub("^\\s","",num1) /*to delete the first space in my string*/
my_number = gsub( " .*$", "", num2 ) /*to select the first number on my string*/
I thought that what's that I wanted, but I had some troubles, especially with rows like the last row in the example : /text/other_text/text/text/some_other_txet-4157/text.html
So, what I really want is to extract the first number after a /.
Any help would be very welcome.
You can use the following regex with gsub:
"^(?:.*?/(\\d+))?.*$"
And replace with "\\1". See the regex demo.
Code:
> s <- c("/text/other_text/123-some_other_txet-4571/text.html", "/text/other_text/another_txet/15-some_other_txet.html", "/text/other_text/25189-some_other_txet/45112-text.html", "/text/other_text/text/text/5418874-some_other_txet.html", "/text/other_text/text/text/some_other_txet-4157/text.html")
> gsub("^(?:.*?/(\\d+))?.*$", "\\1", s, perl=T)
[1] "123" "15" "25189" "5418874" ""
The regex will match optionally (with a (?:.*?/(\\d+))? subpattern) a part of string from the beginning till the first / (with .*?/) followed with 1 or more digits (capturing the digits into Group 1, with (\\d+)) and then the rest of the string up to its end (with .*$).
NOTE that perl=T is required.
with stringr str_extract, your code and pattern can be shortened to:
> str_extract(s, "(?<=/)\\d+")
[1] "123" "15" "25189" "5418874" NA
>
The str_extract will extract the first 1 or more digits if they are preceded with a / (the / itself is not returned as part of the match since it is a lookbehind subpattern, a zero width assertion, that does not put the matched text into the result).
Try this
\/(\d+).*
Demo
Output:
MATCH 1
1. [26-29] `123`
MATCH 2
1. [91-93] `15`
MATCH 3
1. [132-137] `25189`
MATCH 4
1. [197-204] `5418874`
I'm trying to subdivide my metacharacter expression in my gsub() function. But it does not return anything found.
Task: I want to delete all sections of string that contain either .ST or -XST in my vector of strings.
As you can see below, using one expression works fine. But the | expression simply does not work. I'm following the metacharacter guide on https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/ItDT/HTML/node84.html
What can be the issue? And what caused this issue?
My data
> rownames(table.summary)[1:10]
[1] "AAK.ST" "ABB.ST" "ALFA.ST" "ALIV-SDB.ST" "AOI.ST" "ATCO-A.ST" "ATCO-B.ST" "AXFO.ST" "AXIS.ST" "AZN.ST"
> gsub(pattern = '[.](.*)$ | [-](.*)$', replacement = "", x = rownames(table.summary)[1:10])
[1] "AAK.ST" "ABB.ST" "ALFA.ST" "ALIV-SDB.ST" "AOI.ST" "ATCO-A.ST" "ATCO-B.ST" "AXFO.ST" "AXIS.ST" "AZN.ST"
> gsub(pattern = '[.](.*)$', replacement = "", x = rownames(table.summary)[1:10])
[1] "AAK" "ABB" "ALFA" "ALIV-SDB" "AOI" "ATCO-A" "ATCO-B" "AXFO" "AXIS" "AZN"
> gsub(pattern = '[-](.*)$', replacement = "", x = rownames(table.summary)[1:10])
[1] "AAK.ST" "ABB.ST" "ALFA.ST" "ALIV" "AOI.ST" "ATCO" "ATCO" "AXFO.ST" "AXIS.ST" "AZN.ST"
It seems you tested your regex with a flag like IgnorePatternWhitespace (VERBOSE, /x) that allows whitespace inside patterns for readability. You can use it with perl=T option:
d <- c("AAK.ST","ABB.ST","ALFA.ST","ALIV-SDB.ST","AOI.ST","ATCO-A.ST","ATCO-B.ST","AXFO.ST", "AXIS.ST","AZN.ST")
gsub('(?x)[.](.*)$ | [-](.*)$', '', d, perl=T)
## [1] "AAK" "ABB" "ALFA" "ALIV" "AOI" "ATCO" "ATCO" "AXFO" "AXIS" "AZN"
However, you really do not have to use that complex regex here.
If you plan to remove all substrings from ther first hyphen or dot up to the end, you may use the following regex:
[.-].*$
The character class [.-] will match the first . or - symbol and .* wil match all characters up to the end of the string ($).
See IDEONE demo:
d <- c("AAK.ST","ABB.ST","ALFA.ST","ALIV-SDB.ST","AOI.ST","ATCO-A.ST","ATCO-B.ST","AXFO.ST", "AXIS.ST","AZN.ST")
gsub("[.-].*$", "", d)
Result: [1] "AAK" "ABB" "ALFA" "ALIV" "AOI" "ATCO" "ATCO" "AXFO" "AXIS" "AZN"
This will find .ST or -XST at the end of the text and substitute it with empty characters string (effectively removing that part). Don't forget that gsub returns modified string, not modifies it in place. You won't see any change until you reassign return value back to some variable.
strings <- c("AAK.ST", "ABB.ST", "ALFA.ST", "ALIV-SDB.ST", "AOI.ST", "ATCO-A.ST", "ATCO-B.ST", "AXFO.ST", "AXIS.ST", "AZN.ST", "AAC-XST", "AAD-XSTV")
strings <- gsub('(\\.ST|-XST)$', '', strings)
Your regular expression ([.](.*)$ | [-](.*)$'), if not for unnecessary spaces, would remove everything from first dot (.) or dash (-) to end of text. This might be what you want, but not what you said you want.
I am trying to gsub exact FULL string - I know I need to use ^ and $. The problem is that I have special characters in strings (could be [, or .) so I need to use fixed=T. This overrides the ^ and $. Any solution is appreciated.
Need to replace 1st, 2nd element in exact_orig with 1st, 2nd element from exact_change but only if full string is matched from beginning to end.
exact_orig = c("oz","32 oz")
exact_change = c("20 oz","32 ct")
gsub_FixedTrue <- function(i) {
for(k in seq_along(exact_orig)) i = gsub(exact_orig[k],exact_change[k],i,fixed=TRUE)
return(i)
}
Test cases:
print(gsub_FixedTrue("32 oz")) #gives me "32 20 oz" - wrong! Must be "32 ct"
print(gsub_FixedTrue("oz oz")) # gives me "20 oz 20 oz" - wrong! Must remain as "oz oz"
I read a somewhat similar thread, but could not make it work for full string (grep at the beginning of the string with fixed =T in R?)
If you want to exactly match full strings, i don't think you really want to use regular expressions in this case. How about just the match() function
fixedTrue<-function(x) {
m <- match(x, exact_orig)
x[!is.na(m)] <- exact_change[m[!is.na(m)]]
x
}
fixedTrue(c("32 oz","oz oz"))
# [1] "32 ct" "oz oz"
Using stringr package, it is easy to perform regex replacement in a vectorized manner.
Question: How can I do the following:
Replace every word in
hello,world??your,make|[]world,hello,pos
to different replacements, e.g. increasing numbers
1,2??3,4|[]5,6,7
Note that simple separators cannot be assumed, the practical use case is more complicated.
stringr::str_replace_all does not seem to work because it
str_replace_all(x, "(\\w+)", 1:7)
produces a vector for each replacement applied to all words, or it has
uncertain and/or duplicate input entries so that
str_replace_all(x, c("hello" = "1", "world" = "2", ...))
will not work for the purpose.
Here's another idea using gsubfn. The pre function is run before the substitutions and the fun function is run for each substitution:
library(gsubfn)
x <- "hello,world??your,make|[]world,hello,pos"
p <- proto(pre = function(t) t$v <- 0, # replace all matches by 0
fun = function(t, x) t$v <- v + 1) # increment 1
gsubfn("\\w+", p, x)
Which gives:
[1] "1,2??3,4|[]5,6,7"
This variation would give the same answer since gsubfn maintains a count variable for use in proto functions:
pp <- proto(fun = function(...) count)
gsubfn("\\w+", pp, x)
See the gsubfn vignette for examples of using count.
I would suggest the "ore" package for something like this. Of particular note would be ore.search and ore.subst, the latter of which can accept a function as the replacement value.
Examples:
library(ore)
x <- "hello,world??your,make|[]world,hello,pos"
## Match all and replace with the sequence in which they are found
ore.subst("(\\w+)", function(i) seq_along(i), x, all = TRUE)
# [1] "1,2??3,4|[]5,6,7"
## Create a cool ore object with details about what was extracted
ore.search("(\\w+)", x, all = TRUE)
# match: hello world your make world hello pos
# context: , ?? , |[] , ,
# number: 1==== 2==== 3=== 4=== 5==== 6==== 7==
Here a base R solution. It should also be vectorized.
x="hello,world??your,make|[]world,hello,pos"
#split x into single chars
x_split=strsplit(x,"")[[1]]
#find all char positions and replace them with "a"
x_split[gregexpr("\\w", x)[[1]]]="a"
#find all runs of "a"
rle_res=rle(x_split)
#replace run lengths by 1
rle_res$lengths[rle_res$values=="a"]=1
#replace run values by increasing number
rle_res$values[rle_res$values=="a"]=1:sum(rle_res$values=="a")
#use inverse.rle on the modified rle object and collapse string
paste0(inverse.rle(rle_res),collapse="")
#[1] "1,2??3,4|[]5,6,7"
A comment on my answer to this question which should give the desired result using strsplit does not, even though it seems to correctly match the first and last commas in a character vector. This can be proved using gregexpr and regmatches.
So why does strsplit split on each comma in this example, even though regmatches only returns two matches for the same regex?
# We would like to split on the first comma and
# the last comma (positions 4 and 13 in this string)
x <- "123,34,56,78,90"
# Splits on every comma. Must be wrong.
strsplit( x , '^\\w+\\K,|,(?=\\w+$)' , perl = TRUE )[[1]]
#[1] "123" "34" "56" "78" "90"
# Ok. Let's check the positions of matches for this regex
m <- gregexpr( '^\\w+\\K,|,(?=\\w+$)' , x , perl = TRUE )
# Matching positions are at
unlist(m)
[1] 4 13
# And extracting them...
regmatches( x , m )
[[1]]
[1] "," ","
Huh?! What is going on?
The theory of #Aprillion is exact, from R documentation:
The algorithm applied to each input string is
repeat {
if the string is empty
break.
if there is a match
add the string to the left of the match to the output.
remove the match and all to the left of it.
else
add the string to the output.
break.
}
In other words, at each iteration ^ will match the begining of a new string (without the precedent items.)
To simply illustrate this behavior:
> x <- "12345"
> strsplit( x , "^." , perl = TRUE )
[[1]]
[1] "" "" "" "" ""
Here, you can see the consequence of this behavior with a lookahead assertion as delimiter (Thanks to #JoshO'Brien for the link.)