CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rregex
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Reputation: 63

How should I write a regex to remove a specific word from a string?

I have been trying to come up with a suitable regrex to remove the word 'fries' from strings. However, it hasn't been very successful.

Ideally, the regrex expression should be able to remove the word 'fries' regardless of whether is it in upper case and/ or lower case and the word 'fries' shouldn't be removed under the following cases.

frenchfries
friesislove
ilovefriesverymuch

This is what I have came up with so far

gsub('(?i)\\Wfries\\W','',string)

One major flaw with the above is that regex expression isn't able to detect the word 'fries' if it's at either the start or the end of the string.

eg. 'I love fries', 'Fries is love'

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1820

Answers (2)

Truong Nhat Minh
Truong Nhat Minh

Reputation: 207

You can also try this:

gsub("\\<fries\\>",replacement = "",string ,ignore.case = TRUE)

\\<fries\\> will make sure that only the exact word "fries" will be replaced

Upvotes: 1

Wiktor Stribiżew
Wiktor Stribiżew

Reputation: 626738

TRE regex engine does not support inline modifiers and to match a whole word you need to use word boundaries \b.

You may use a PCRE regex if you want to use an inline case insensitive modifier (?i):

gsub('(?i)\\bfries\\b','',string, perl = TRUE)

or a TRE regex with ignore.case =TRUE argument:

gsub('\\bfries\\b','',string, ignore.case =TRUE)

Upvotes: 3

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