STAT 260

Lec 7: Strings

Owen G. Ward

Goals of this section

• Basics of Strings
• Basic String Operations
• Regular Expressions

Load packages and datasets

library(tidyverse)
library(stringr)

Reading

Required reading:

• Strings with stringr: Chapter 14 and 15 of online text.

– Note that the text (esp Chpt 15) emphasizes regular expressions more than we will
in this lecture.

Useful reference:

• String manipulation with stringr cheatsheet at https://www.rstudio.com/resources/cheatsheets/]

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Working with …

• Fixed, or literal strings, like fish:

– count the number of characters in a string
– detect (yes/no) or find (starting position) substrings
– extract and substitute substrings
– split and combine strings
• String patterns, like f[aeiou]sh (more on patterns, or regular expressions in a moment):
– detect, find, extract and substitute
• Use tools from the stringr package

The stringr package

• Character string manipulation in base R has evolved over time as a bit of a patch-work
of tools.
• The names and functionality of these tools has been taken from string manipulation tools
in Unix and scripting languages like Perl.

– Steep learning curve for many users.

• The stringr package aims for a cleaner interface for tasks that relate to detecting,
extracting, replacing and splitting on substrings.

Counting the number of characters with str_length

mystrings <- c(
"one fish", "two fish",
"red fish", "blue fish"
)
str_length(mystrings)

[1] 8 8 8 9

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Combining Strings with str_c()

str_c(mystrings[1], mystrings[2])

[1] "one fishtwo fish"

str_c(mystrings[1], mystrings[2], sep = ", ")

[1] "one fish, two fish"

str_c(mystrings[1], NA, sep = ", ")

[1] NA

str_c(mystrings[1], str_replace_na(NA), sep = ", ")

[1] "one fish, NA"

str_c(mystrings, collapse = ", ")

[1] "one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish"

Subsetting with str_sub()

• Specify start and stop.

• If stop greater than number of characters, then stop subsetting at the end of the string.
• If start greater than number of characters, return ""

str_sub(mystrings, 1, 3)

[1] "one" "two" "red" "blu"

str_sub(mystrings, -4, -1) # negative means back from end

[1] "fish" "fish" "fish" "fish"

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 str_sub(mystrings, 1, 10000)

[1] "one fish" "two fish" "red fish" "blue fish"

str_sub(mystrings, 9, 10000)

[1] "" "" "" "h"

Exercise 1 Part 1

• For demog as defined in the following code chunk:

1. using one line of code, extract the substring that represents the gender and age
category (u stands for unknown) from each of the three components;

demog <- c("new_sp_f014", "new_sp_m1524", "new_sp_mu")

Exercise 1 Part 2

2. extract the last four characters of each of the three components; and
3. combine the three components into one string, separated by a plus-sign.

demog <- c("new_sp_f014", "new_sp_m1524", "new_sp_mu")

Note: These are separate sub-exercises. (2) does not follow from (1), etc.

Fixed Strings vs Regular Expressions

• Fixed strings are interpreted literally, while regular expressions are a language for spec-
ifying patterns.
– For example, “fish” is fixed and matches only “fish”, while “f[aeiou]sh” matches to
“fash”, “fesh”, …, “fush”.
• Functions from stringr that detect/find/extract/substitute strings can do so with ether
fixed strings or regular expressions.

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 • We will illustrate these functions with fixed strings first, then discuss regular expressions.
• The text used to discuss regular expressions first but has no created a full chapter on
them. We won’t go into much detail
• Regular expressions are (for me) difficult to remember and something I always have to
Google

Detecting substrings with str_detect()

pattern <- "red"

str_detect(mystrings, pattern)

[1] FALSE FALSE TRUE FALSE

mystrings[str_detect(mystrings, pattern)]

[1] "red fish"

pattern <- "fish"

str_detect(mystrings, pattern)

[1] TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE

• (We will later see that we can specify a more general pattern than a fixed string.)

Finding substring starting position

• str_locate() returns the start and stop positions of the first occurrence of a string.
• str_locate_all() returns the start and stop of all occurrences.

Seuss <- str_c(mystrings, collapse = ", ")

Seuss

[1] "one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish"

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 str_locate(Seuss, pattern)

start end
[1,] 5 8

str_locate_all(Seuss, pattern)

[[1]]
start end
[1,] 5 8
[2,] 15 18
[3,] 25 28
[4,] 36 39

Replacing (substituting) substrings

Seuss

[1] "one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish"

• Use str_replace and str_replace_all.

str_replace(Seuss, "fish", "bird") # replace first occurance

[1] "one bird, two fish, red fish, blue fish"

str_replace_all(Seuss, "fish", "bird") # replace all

[1] "one bird, two bird, red bird, blue bird"

str_replace_all(Seuss, c("one" = "1", "two" = "2")) # multiple replacements

[1] "1 fish, 2 fish, red fish, blue fish"

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Splitting Strings

• Some characters in strings, such as ., have a special meaning (more in a minute). One
option is to wrap such patterns in fixed() for a fixed string.

mystrings <- c("20.50", "33.33")

str_split(mystrings, pattern = ".")

[[1]]
[1] "" "" "" "" "" ""

[[2]]
[1] "" "" "" "" "" ""

str_split(mystrings, pattern = fixed("."))

[[1]]
[1] "20" "50"

[[2]]
[1] "33" "33"

Regular expressions

• Regular expressions (abbreviated regexps) are recipes used to specify search patterns.
• We use character strings to specify regexps in R.
• Regular expressions is a complex topic. We’ll only cover (some of) the basics.

A simple pattern with .

• To illustrate pattern matching, use a simple pattern p.n, meaning p followed by any
character, followed by n.

pattern <- "p.n"

mystrings <- c("pineapple", "apple", "pen")
str_detect(mystrings, pattern)

[1] TRUE FALSE TRUE

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Matching Special Characters

• Suppose we want to match a pattern involving .

• We need to precede, or “escape” the special by a \.
• Unfortunately, \ is a “special” for character strings, so we need to escape it too; that is,
we need to type the character string "\\." to represent the regexp \.

pattern2 <- "3.40"

mystrings2 <- c("33.40", "3340")
str_detect(mystrings2, pattern2)

[1] TRUE TRUE

pattern2 <- "3\\.40"

str_detect(mystrings2, pattern2)

[1] TRUE FALSE

Splitting, Locating and Extracting with Patterns

mystrings

[1] "pineapple" "apple" "pen"

pattern

[1] "p.n"

str_split(mystrings, pattern)

[[1]]
[1] "" "eapple"

[[2]]
[1] "apple"

[[3]]
[1] "" ""

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 str_locate(mystrings, pattern)

start end
[1,] 1 3
[2,] NA NA
[3,] 1 3

Splitting, Locating and Extracting with Patterns

mystrings

[1] "pineapple" "apple" "pen"

pattern

[1] "p.n"

str_extract(mystrings, pattern)

[1] "pin" NA "pen"

str_match(mystrings, pattern)

[,1]
[1,] "pin"
[2,] NA
[3,] "pen"

Replacing patterns

• str_replace and str_replace_all accept regular expressions; e.g.,

str_replace(mystrings, pattern, "PPAP")

[1] "PPAPeapple" "apple" "PPAP"

• The replacement string is literal; e.g.,

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 str_replace(mystrings, pattern, "p.n")

[1] "p.neapple" "apple" "p.n"

Exercise 2

• Replace the decimals with commas in the following strings in exstring.

exstring <- c("$55.30", "$22.43")

Adding * and + quantifiers to .

• The combinations .* and .+ match multiple characters.

– E.G., f.*n matches f followed by 0 or more characters, followed by n.
– f.+n matches f followed by 1 or more characters, followed by n.

mystrings <- c("fun", "for fun", "fn")

pattern1 <- "f.*n"
pattern2 <- "f.+n"
str_extract(mystrings, pattern1)

[1] "fun" "for fun" "fn"

str_extract(mystrings, pattern2)

[1] "fun" "for fun" NA

“Greedy” matching with *

• The * quantifier matches the longest possible string.

mystrings <- c("fun", "fun, fun, fun", "fn")

pattern1 <- "f.*n"
str_extract(mystrings, pattern1)

[1] "fun" "fun, fun, fun" "fn"

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Numerical quantifiers

• Use {n} to require exactly n matches, {n,} to require n or more, {,m} at most m, and
{n,m} between n and m.

str_extract(mystrings, "f.{6}n")

[1] NA "fun, fun" NA

str_extract(mystrings, "f.{1,13}n")

[1] "fun" "fun, fun, fun" NA

Anchors

• Regular expressions match any part of a string.

• Use the “anchor” ^ to restrict a match to the start and the anchor $ to restrict a match
to the end of a string.

mystrings <- c("pineapple", "apple", "pen")

str_extract(mystrings, "^p")

[1] "p" NA "p"

str_extract(mystrings, "e$")

[1] "e" "e" NA

Exercise 3

• Create a regular expression that matches words that are exactly three letters long.

Other characters to match

• We have illustrated matching on the pattern ., which is “any character.”

• Instead we can specify a class of characters to match.

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 pattern4 <- "f[aeiou]*n"
mystrings <- c(
"fan", "fin", "fun", "fan, fin, fun",
"friend", "faint"
)
str_extract(mystrings, pattern4)

[1] "fan" "fin" "fun" "fan" NA "fain"

mystrings

[1] "fan" "fin" "fun" "fan, fin, fun"

[5] "friend" "faint"

pattern4

[1] "f[aeiou]*n"

str_extract_all(mystrings, pattern4)

[[1]]
[1] "fan"

[[2]]
[1] "fin"

[[3]]
[1] "fun"

[[4]]
[1] "fan" "fin" "fun"

[[5]]
character(0)

[[6]]
[1] "fain"

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Short-hands for Common Character Classes

• \d matches any digit (create with "\\d").

• \s matches any white-space (create with "\\s").
• Use a dash to specify a range of characters; e.g.,

– [A-Z] matches capital letters

– [a-z] matches lower-case letters
– [1-9] matches any digit (and so is the same as \d).

• Use the caret to negate: [^abc] matches anything except a, b or c.

Exercise 4

• Create a regular expression that matches words that end in ed but not eed.

Alternatives

• The | in a regular expression is like the logical OR.

str_replace_all(Seuss, "red|blue", "color")

[1] "one fish, two fish, color fish, color fish"

str_replace_all("Is it grey or gray?", "gr(e|a)y", "white")

[1] "Is it white or white?"

Converting Case

• Use str_to_upper() to change lower- to upper-case and str_to_lower() to change

upper- to lower-case.

str_to_upper(Seuss)

[1] "ONE FISH, TWO FISH, RED FISH, BLUE FISH"

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In summary…

• There is a lot to working with strings and using regular expressions.

• In this lecture I tried to cover some of the more useful (in my opinion) functions from
the stringr tidyverse package.
• The online textbook covers more information and gives additional examples; I do not
expect you to know (e.g., for an exam) any topics that were not covered in this lecture!

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