Table of Contents
str_replace() is a function in the stringr package in R that replaces all occurrences of a character or set of characters with another character or set of characters. It takes three parameters: the string to be manipulated, the character or set of characters to be replaced, and the character or set of characters to replace them with. The syntax for using str_replace is as follows: str_replace(string, find, replace). It returns a modified string as output.
The str_replace() function from the package in R can be used to replace matched patterns in a string. This function uses the following syntax:
str_replace(string, pattern, replacement)
where:
- string: Character vector
- pattern: Pattern to look for
- replacement: A character vector of replacements
This tutorial provides several examples of how to use this function in practice on the following data frame:
#create data frame df <- data.frame(team=c('team_A', 'team_B', 'team_C', 'team_D'), conference=c('West', 'West', 'East', 'East'), points=c(88, 97, 94, 104)) #view data frame df team conference points 1 team_A West 88 2 team_B West 97 3 team_C East 94 4 team_D East 104
Example 1: Replace String with Pattern
The following code shows how to replace the string “West” with “Western” in the conference column:
library(stringr) #replace "West" with "Western" in the conference column df$conference <- str_replace(df$conference, "West", "Western") #view data frame df team conference points 1 team_A Western 88 2 team_B Western 97 3 team_C East 94 4 team_D East 104
Example 2: Replace String with Nothing
The following code shows how to replace the string “team_” with nothing in the team column:
#replace "team_" with nothing in the team column df$team<- str_replace(df$team, "team_", "") #view data frame df team conference points 1 A West 88 2 B West 97 3 C East 94 4 D East 104
Example 3: Replace Multiple Strings
The following code shows how to replace multiple strings in a single column. Specifically:
- Replace “West” with “W”
- Replace “East” with “E”
Since we’re replacing multiple strings, we use the str_replace_all() function:
#replace multiple words in the conference column df$conference <- str_replace_all(df$conference, c("West" = "W", "East" = "E")) #view data frame df team conference points 1 team_A W 88 2 team_B W 97 3 team_C E 94 4 team_D E 104
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in R: