Count number of dots in character string with str_count? - r

I am trying to count the number of dots in a character string.
I have tried to use str_count but it gives me the number of letters of the string instead.
ex_str <- "This.is.a.string"
str_count(ex_str, '.')
nchar(ex_str)

. is a special regex symbol, so you need to escape it:
str_count(ex_str, '\\.')
# [1] 3
Using just base R you could do:
nchar(gsub("[^.]", "", ex_str))
Using stringi:
stri_count_fixed(ex_str, '.')

Another base R solution could be:
length(grepRaw(".", ex_str, fixed = TRUE, all = TRUE))
[1] 3

You may also use the base function gregexpr:
sum(gregexpr(".", ex_str, fixed=TRUE)[[1]] > 0)
[1] 3

You can use stringr::str_count with a fixed(...) argument to avoid treating it as a regular expression:
str_count(ex_str, fixed('.'))
See the online R demo:
library(stringr)
ex_str <- "This.is.a.string"
str_count(ex_str, fixed('.'))
## => [1] 3

Related

Extract a number from a string which precedes a phrase in R

I am in R and would like to extract a two digit number 38y from the following string:
"/Users/files/folder/file_number_23a_version_38y_Control.txt"
I know that _Control always comes after the 38y and that 38y is preceded by an underscore. How can I use strsplit or other R commands to extract the 38y?
You could use
regmatches(x, regexpr("[^_]+(?=_Control)", x, perl = TRUE))
# [1] "38y"
or equivalently
stringr::str_extract(x, "[^_]+(?=_Control)")
# [1] "38y"
Using gsub.
gsub('.*_(.*)_Control.*', '\\1', x)
# [1] "38y"
See demo with detailed explanation.
A possible solution:
library(stringr)
text <- "/Users/files/folder/file_number_23a_version_38y_Control.txt"
str_extract(text, "(?<=_)\\d+\\D(?=_Control)")
#> [1] "38y"
You can find an explanation of the regex part at:
https://regex101.com/r/PQSZHX/1

Use Regular expressions extract specific characters

text <- c('d__Viruses|f__Closteroviridae|g__Closterovirus|s__Citrus_tristeza_virus',
'd__Viruses|o__Tymovirales|f__Alphaflexiviridae|g__Mandarivirus|s__Citrus_yellow_vein_clearing_virus',
'd__Viruses|o__Ortervirales|f__Retroviridae|s__Columba_palumbus_retrovirus')
I have tried but failed:
str_extract(text, pattern = 'f.*\\|')
How can I get
f__Closteroviridae
f__Alphaflexiviridae
f__Retroviridae
Any help will be high appreciated!
Make the regex non-greedy and since you don't want "|" in final output use positive lookahead.
stringr::str_extract(text, 'f.*?(?=\\|)')
#[1] "f__Closteroviridae" "f__Alphaflexiviridae" "f__Retroviridae"
In base R, we can use sub :
sub('.*(f_.*?)\\|.*', '\\1', text)
#[1] "f__Closteroviridae" "f__Alphaflexiviridae" "f__Retroviridae"
For a base R solution, I would use regmatches along with gregexpr:
m <- gregexpr("\\bf__[^|]+", text)
as.character(regmatches(text, m))
[1] "f__Closteroviridae" "f__Alphaflexiviridae" "f__Retroviridae"
The advantage of using gregexpr as above is that should an input contain more than one f__ matching term, we could also capture it. For example:
x <- 'd__Viruses|f__Closteroviridae|g__Closterovirus|f__some_virus'
m <- gregexpr("\\bf__[^|]+", x)
regmatches(x, m)[[1]]
[1] "f__Closteroviridae" "f__some_virus"
Data:
text <- c('d__Viruses|f__Closteroviridae|g__Closterovirus|s__Citrus_tristeza_virus',
'd__Viruses|o__Tymovirales|f__Alphaflexiviridae|g__Mandarivirus|s__Citrus_yellow_vein_clearing_virus',
'd__Viruses|o__Ortervirales|f__Retroviridae|s__Columba_palumbus_retrovirus')

How to count " in the string? [duplicate]

I am trying to get the number of open brackets in a character string in R. I am using the str_count function from the stringr package
s<- "(hi),(bye),(hi)"
str_count(s,"(")
Error in stri_count_regex(string, pattern, opts_regex = attr(pattern,
: ` Incorrectly nested parentheses in regexp pattern.
(U_REGEX_MISMATCHED_PAREN)
I am hoping to get 3 for this example
( is a special character. You need to escape it:
str_count(s,"\\(")
# [1] 3
Alternatively, given that you're using stringr, you can use the coll function:
str_count(s,coll("("))
# [1] 3
You could also use gregexpr along with length in base R:
sum(gregexpr("(", s, fixed=TRUE)[[1]] > 0)
[1] 3
gregexpr takes in a character vector and returns a list with the starting positions of each match. I added fixed=TRUE in order to match literals.length will not work because gregexpr returns -1 when a subexpression is not found.
If you have a character vector of length greater than one, you would need to feed the result to sapply:
# new example
s<- c("(hi),(bye),(hi)", "this (that) other", "what")
sapply((gregexpr("(", s, fixed=TRUE)), function(i) sum(i > 0))
[1] 3 1 0
If you want to do it in base R you can split into a vector of individual characters and count the "(" directly (without representing it as a regular expression):
> s<- "(hi),(bye),(hi)"
> chars <- unlist(strsplit(s,""))
> length(chars[chars == "("])
[1] 3

String between first two (.dots)

Hi have data which contains two or more dots. My requirement is to get string from first to second dot.
E.g string <- "abcd.vdgd.dhdsg"
Result expected =vdgd
I have used
pt <-strapply(string, "\\.(.*)\\.", simplify = TRUE)
which is giving correct data but for string having more than two dots its not working as expected.
e.g string <- "abcd.vdgd.dhdsg.jsgs"
its giving dhdsg.jsgs but expected is vdgd
Could anyone help me.
Thanks & Regards,
In base R we can use strsplit
ss <- "abcd.vdgd.dhdsg"
unlist(strsplit(ss, "\\."))[2]
#[1] "vdgd"
Or using gregexpr with regmatches
unlist(regmatches(ss, gregexpr("[^\\.]+", ss)))[2]
#[1] "vdgd"
Or using gsub (thanks #TCZhang)
gsub("^.+?\\.(.+?)\\..*$", "\\1", ss)
#[1] "vdgd"
Another option:
string <- "abcd.vdgd.dhdsg.jsgs"
library(stringr)
str_extract(string = string, pattern = "(?<=\\.).*?(?=\\.)")
[1] "vdgd"
I like this one because the str_extract function will return the first instance of the correct pattern, but you could also use str_extract_all to get all instances.
str_extract_all(string = string, pattern = "(?<=\\.).*?(?=\\.)")
[[1]]
[1] "vdgd" "dhdsg"
From here, you could index to get any position between two dots you want.
Another solution with the qdapRegex package:
library(qdapRegex)
ex_between("abcd.vdgd.dhdsg.jsgs", ".", ".")[[1]][1]
# "vdgd"
You can use read.table as well if you wish.Here providing the string as given in your problem and selecting the separator as dot("."), Once the column is converted into a data.frame, you may choose to select whatever column you want to pick(In this case it is column number 2).
read.table(text=string, sep=".",stringsAsFactors = FALSE)[,2]
Output:
> read.table(text=string, sep=".",stringsAsFactors = FALSE)[,2]
[1] "vdgd"
Here is a fun easy way via stringr
stringr::word(string, 2, sep = '\\.')
Here are two options that are vectorized over the input string vector:
You can try tstrsplit from data.table, which is vectorized over string:
> string <- c("abcd.vdgd.dhdsg", "abcd.vdgd.dhdsg.jsgs")
> tstrsplit(string, '.', fixed = TRUE)[[2]]
[1] "vdgd" "vdgd"
or regex:
> sub('.*?\\.(.*?)\\..*', '\\1', string)
[1] "vdgd" "vdgd"`

Use substr until condition is met

I have a vector from which I just need the first word. The words have different lengths. Words are separated by a symbol (. and _) How can I use the substr() function to get a new vector with just the first word?
I was thinking of something like this
x <- c("wooombel.ab","mugran.cd","friendly_ef.ab","hungry_kd.xy")
y <- substr(x,0, ???)
I think sub with some regular expressions would be the easiest solution:
sub(pattern = "[._].*", replacement = "", x = x)
# [1] "wooombel" "mugran" "friendly" "hungry"
Try:
sapply(strsplit(x,'[._]'), function(x) x[1])
[1] "wooombel" "mugran" "friendly" "hungry"
You could also use package stringr. It has some really handy functions for string manipulation.
One that comes to mind for this problem is word. It has a sep argument that allows the use of a regular expression.
> x <- c("wooombel.ab","mugran.cd","friendly_ef.ab","hungry_kd.xy")
> library(stringr)
> word(x, sep = "[._]")
# [1] "wooombel" "mugran" "friendly" "hungry"
Another option that allows you to continue to use substr is str_locate. So if we just subtract 1 from its result, we can get the desired first words.
> substr(x, 1, str_locate(x, "[._]")-1)
# [1] "wooombel" "mugran" "friendly" "hungry"
An extraction approach with stringi:
library(stringi)
stri_extract_first_regex(x, "[a-z]+(?=[._])")
## [1] "wooombel" "mugran" "friendly" "hungry"
Though "[^a-z]+(?=[._])" may be more explicit.
Regex explanation:
[^a-z]+ any character except: 'a' to 'z' (1 or
more times)
(?= look ahead to see if there is:
[._] any character of: '.', '_'
) end of look-ahead

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