CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rgsubstringr
FDose
FDose

Reputation: 53

R: How to remove a string containing a specific character pattern?

I'm trying to remove strings that contain a specific character pattern. My data looks somethink like this: 

places <- c("copenhagen", "copenhagens", "Berlin", "Hamburg")

I would like to remove all elements that contain "copenhagen", i.e. "copenhagen" and "copenhagens". But I was only able to come up with the following code:

library(stringr) replacement.vector <- c("copenhagen", "copenhagens")

for(i in 1:length(replacement.vector)){ places = lapply(places, FUN=function(x) gsub(paste0("\\b",replacement.vector[i],"\\b"), "", x))

I'm looking fo a function that enables me to remove all elements that contain "copenhagen" without having to specify whether or not the element also includes other letters.

Best, Dose

Upvotes: 3

Views: 4293

Answers (1)

akrun
akrun

Reputation: 887971

Based on the OP's code, it seems like we need to subset the 'places'. In that case, it may be better to use grep with invert= TRUE argument

grep("copenhagen", places, invert=TRUE, value = TRUE)
#[1] "Berlin"  "Hamburg"

or use grepl and negate (!) 

places[!grepl("copenhagen", places)]
#[1] "Berlin"  "Hamburg"

Upvotes: 5

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