CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rstring
checkmate363
checkmate363

Reputation: 49

Alternative Find/Replace Method (str_replace and gsub not working)

I have a column in a data frame clean.data$Country. One of the cells in that is currently written as USA(For Country). This is row 3216, so the observation can be viewed with clean.data$Country[3216].

I am trying to insert a space between "USA" and the parenthesis, but neither of the following methods have worked:

clean.data$Country <- str_replace(clean.data$Country, "USA(For Territories)", "USA (For Territories)")
clean.data$Country <- gsub("USA(For Territories)", "USA (Territories)", clean.data$Country)

What alternative methods are there for me to do this? I have tried closing my .rmd file, clearing my workspace of all objects, and restarting RStudio.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 364

Answers (2)

A5C1D2H2I1M1N2O1R2T1
A5C1D2H2I1M1N2O1R2T1

Reputation: 193517

Add fixed = TRUE or escape your parentheses:

x <- "USA(For Territories)"

## Your attempt
gsub("USA(For Territories)", "USA (Territories)", x)
# [1] "USA(For Territories)"

## fixed = TRUE
gsub("USA(For Territories)", "USA (Territories)", x, fixed = TRUE)
# [1] "USA (Territories)"

## Escaping the parentheses
gsub("USA\\(For Territories\\)", "USA (Territories)", x)
# [1] "USA (Territories)"

Using str_replace, you can try:

library(stringr)

str_replace(x, "USA\\(For Territories\\)", "USA (Territories)")
# [1] "USA (Territories)"

str_replace(x, fixed("USA(For Territories)"), "USA (Territories)")
# [1] "USA (Territories)"

Upvotes: 0

Tim Biegeleisen
Tim Biegeleisen

Reputation: 521178

If you are certain of this single data point error only, just make an assignment:

clean.data$Country[3216] <- "USA (For Territories)"

If you want a more general solution, which could fix this problem in multiple places, then use a regex pattern which does that:

clean.data$Country <- sub("^(\\w+)\\((.*)\\)$", "\\1 (\\2)", clean.data$Country)

Upvotes: 1

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