CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rstringgsub
Luc
Luc

Reputation: 958

How can I remove parts of string based on other column in R?

I want to remove a part of a string (based on another column) and I am interested in the remainder of the string...

Example:

  dt <- data.frame(SomeText = c("ABCDEF", "ABCDEF", "ABCDEF"), 
                   ToRemove = c("A", "CDE", ""), 
                   WantedResult = c("BCDEF", "ABF", "ABCDEF"))

>   dt
  SomeText ToRemove WantedResult
1   ABCDEF        A        BCDEF
2   ABCDEF      CDE          ABF
3   ABCDEF                ABCDEF

Thus (line 2 as example), remove 'CDE' from 'ABCDEF' so we are left with 'ABF'

Upvotes: 2

Views: 797

Answers (1)

Ronak Shah
Ronak Shah

Reputation: 388817

Replace empty patterns with ^$

dt$ToRemove[dt$ToRemove == ''] <- '^$'

and then use stringr::str_remove which is vectorised.

dt$result <- stringr::str_remove(dt$SomeText, dt$ToRemove)
dt
#  SomeText ToRemove result
#1   ABCDEF        A  BCDEF
#2   ABCDEF      CDE    ABF
#3   ABCDEF       ^$ ABCDEF

Upvotes: 5

Related Questions