CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rtextgsub
aalen
aalen

Reputation: 21

gsub function, exact match of the pattern

I have a list of words included in the data frame called remove. I want to remove all the words in text. I want to remove the exact words. 

remove <- data.frame("the", "a", "she")
text <- c("she", "he", "a", "the", "aaaa")

for (i in 1:3) {
  text <- gsub(data[i, 1], "", text)
}

Attached is the result returned

#[1] ""   "he" ""   ""   ""

However what I am expecting is 

#[1] ""   "he" ""   ""   "aaaa"

I also tried the following code, but it does return the expected result:

for (i in 1:3) {
    text <- gsub("^data[i, 1]$", "", text)
    }

Thanks so much for your help.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 467

Answers (2)

Samuel
Samuel

Reputation: 3053

A simple base R solution is:

text[!text %in% as.vector(unlist(remove, use.names = FALSE))]

Upvotes: 1

d.b
d.b

Reputation: 32548

For exact match, use value matching (%in%)

remove<-c("the","a","she") #I made remove a vector too
replace(text, text %in% remove, "")
#[1] ""     "he"   ""     ""     "aaaa"

Upvotes: 1

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