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Programming in R. Ex3. Detailed Expl

The document provides a detailed explanation of string handling and looping in R, including operations such as searching for substrings, replacing text, and iterating through vectors. It covers functions like grep, grepl, str_replace, and sapply, demonstrating their usage with example code. Additionally, it highlights the efficiency of vectorized operations compared to traditional loops.

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9 views6 pages

Programming in R. Ex3. Detailed Expl

The document provides a detailed explanation of string handling and looping in R, including operations such as searching for substrings, replacing text, and iterating through vectors. It covers functions like grep, grepl, str_replace, and sapply, demonstrating their usage with example code. Additionally, it highlights the efficiency of vectorized operations compared to traditional loops.

Uploaded by

soloviovalada
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Ex3.

Detailed explanation

Exercise 1: String Handling


Code:
r
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things <- c("abcd", "cdab", "cabdab", "c ab", "ab")

● Explanation:
○ things: A variable storing a vector of strings.
○ c(): Combines individual string elements into a vector. This is a way to
create a list-like collection in R.
○ The vector contains five string elements representing a mix of words with the
substring "ab" in different contexts.

Find All Positions of "ab":


r
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things[grep("ab", things)]

● grep("ab", things):
○ Searches for the pattern "ab" in each element of things.
○ Returns the indices of elements containing "ab".
● things[...]:
○ Accesses elements of things at the positions returned by grep.
○ Output: Elements containing "ab": c("abcd", "cdab", "cabdab", "c
ab", "ab").

Output Matching Elements Directly:


r
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grep("ab", things, value = TRUE)

● value = TRUE:
○ Instead of returning indices, it directly returns the matching elements.
Boolean Check for Matches:
r
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grepl("ab", things)

● grepl():
○ Similar to grep, but instead of indices, it returns a logical vector.
○ Each element corresponds to whether the string contains "ab" (TRUE or
FALSE).

Replace "ab" with "AB":


r
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str_replace(things, "ab", "AB")

● str_replace():
○ Replaces the first occurrence of "ab" with "AB" in each string.
○ Example: "abcd" → "ABcd".

Replace All Occurrences:


r
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str_replace_all(things, "ab", "AB")

● str_replace_all():
○ Replaces every occurrence of "ab" in each string.

Concatenate Path and File Name:


r
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str_c(path, filename, sep = "/")

● str_c():
○ Joins the path and filename with a specified separator ("/").
○ Example: "www.path.cbs.dk" and "filename.txt" →
"www.path.cbs.dk/filename.txt".
Exercise 2: Writing a Simple Loop
This exercise introduces the concept of loops in R to iterate through a vector of strings and
perform operations on each element.

Code 1: Printing Each Element Using a For-Loop


r
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strings <- c("abcd", "cdab", "cabdab", "c ab", "ab")

for (i in strings) {
print(i)
}

● strings: A vector containing five string elements: ["abcd", "cdab",


"cabdab", "c ab", "ab"].
○ The vector will serve as the input for the loop.
● for (i in strings):
○ The for loop iterates over each element in the strings vector.
○ During each iteration, the current element is assigned to the variable i.
● print(i):
○ The print() function outputs the value of i, which represents the current
string in the iteration.

How the Loop Works Step by Step:

1. On the first iteration, i = "abcd", so print(i) outputs "abcd".


2. On the second iteration, i = "cdab", so print(i) outputs "cdab".
3. This continues for all elements in the strings vector.

Output:

csharp
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[1] "abcd"
[1] "cdab"
[1] "cabdab"
[1] "c ab"
[1] "ab"

Code 2: Printing Elements by Index


r
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for (i in 1:length(strings)) {
print(strings[i])
}

● 1:length(strings):
○ length(strings) returns the number of elements in the strings vector,
which is 5.
○ 1:length(strings) generates a sequence of numbers from 1 to 5 ([1,
2, 3, 4, 5]).
○ This sequence represents the indices of the vector strings.
● for (i in 1:length(strings)):
○ Loops through each index of the strings vector.
○ The variable i takes on values 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 during the iterations.
● strings[i]:
○ Accesses the i-th element of strings using the index i.
● print(strings[i]):
○ Prints the current element of strings based on the index i.

How the Loop Works Step by Step:

1. On the first iteration, i = 1, so strings[1] = "abcd", and


print(strings[i]) outputs "abcd".
2. On the second iteration, i = 2, so strings[2] = "cdab", and
print(strings[i]) outputs "cdab".
3. This continues until i = 5, printing all elements.

Output:

csharp
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[1] "abcd"
[1] "cdab"
[1] "cabdab"
[1] "c ab"
[1] "ab"

Code 3: Checking for a Substring and Printing Results


r
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for (i in strings) {
print(grepl("cd", i))
}
● for (i in strings):
○ Similar to the first loop, it iterates over each string in the strings vector.
● grepl("cd", i):
○ The grepl() function checks whether the substring "cd" exists in the
current string (i).
○ Returns TRUE if "cd" is found, otherwise FALSE.
● print(grepl("cd", i)):
○ Prints the result of the grepl() function for each string.

How the Loop Works Step by Step:

1. On the first iteration, i = "abcd". Since "abcd" contains "cd", grepl("cd",


"abcd") returns TRUE.
2. On the second iteration, i = "cdab". Since "cdab" contains "cd", grepl("cd",
"cdab") returns TRUE.
3. On the third iteration, i = "cabdab". Since "cabdab" does not contain "cd",
grepl("cd", "cabdab") returns FALSE.
4. The loop continues for all strings.

Output:

csharp
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[1] TRUE
[1] TRUE
[1] FALSE
[1] FALSE
[1] FALSE

Code 4: Using sapply() for Efficiency


r
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sapply(strings, identity)

● sapply():
○ Stands for "simplified apply."
○ Applies the specified function (identity() in this case) to each element of
the strings vector.
● identity():
○ A function that returns its input without modification. Essentially, it does
nothing to the input.
● This is a vectorized alternative to the loop, and it outputs all elements of the vector as
they are.

Output:
arduino
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abcd cdab cabdab c ab ab
"abcd" "cdab" "cabdab" "c ab" "ab"

Summary of Exercise 2
1. For-Loops: Useful for iterating through vectors and performing operations element-
by-element. R allows iteration over:
○ Direct elements (e.g., for (i in strings)).
○ Indices (e.g., for (i in 1:length(strings))).
2. Substring Checks:
○ Use grepl() to determine whether a specific substring exists within a string.
3. Vectorized Alternatives:
○ Use sapply() to apply functions to each element of a vector efficiently.
○ Results are often faster and more concise than loops.

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