stri_split {stringi}

Split a String By Pattern Matches

Description

These functions split each element in str into substrings. pattern defines the delimiters that separate the inputs into tokens. The input data between the matches become the fields themselves.

Usage

stri_split(str, ..., regex, fixed, coll, charclass)

stri_split_fixed(
  str,
  pattern,
  n = -1L,
  omit_empty = FALSE,
  tokens_only = FALSE,
  simplify = FALSE,
  ...,
  opts_fixed = NULL
)

stri_split_regex(
  str,
  pattern,
  n = -1L,
  omit_empty = FALSE,
  tokens_only = FALSE,
  simplify = FALSE,
  ...,
  opts_regex = NULL
)

stri_split_coll(
  str,
  pattern,
  n = -1L,
  omit_empty = FALSE,
  tokens_only = FALSE,
  simplify = FALSE,
  ...,
  opts_collator = NULL
)

stri_split_charclass(
  str,
  pattern,
  n = -1L,
  omit_empty = FALSE,
  tokens_only = FALSE,
  simplify = FALSE
)

Arguments

str

character vector; strings to search in

...

supplementary arguments passed to the underlying functions, including additional settings for opts_collator, opts_regex, opts_fixed, and so on

pattern, regex, fixed, coll, charclass

character vector; search patterns; for more details refer to stringi-search

n

integer vector, maximal number of strings to return, and, at the same time, maximal number of text boundaries to look for

omit_empty

logical vector; determines whether empty tokens should be removed from the result (TRUE or FALSE) or replaced with NAs (NA)

tokens_only

single logical value; may affect the result if n is positive, see Details

simplify

single logical value; if TRUE or NA, then a character matrix is returned; otherwise (the default), a list of character vectors is given, see Value

opts_collator, opts_fixed, opts_regex

a named list used to tune up the search engine's settings; see stri_opts_collator, stri_opts_fixed, and stri_opts_regex, respectively; NULL for the defaults

Details

Vectorized over str, pattern, n, and omit_empty (with recycling of the elements in the shorter vector if necessary).

If n is negative, then all pieces are extracted. Otherwise, if tokens_only is FALSE (which is the default), then n-1 tokens are extracted (if possible) and the n-th string gives the remainder (see Examples). On the other hand, if tokens_only is TRUE, then only full tokens (up to n pieces) are extracted.

omit_empty is applied during the split process: if it is set to TRUE, then tokens of zero length are ignored. Thus, empty strings will never appear in the resulting vector. On the other hand, if omit_empty is NA, then empty tokens are substituted with missing strings.

Empty search patterns are not supported. If you wish to split a string into individual characters, use, e.g., stri_split_boundaries(str, type='character') for THE Unicode way.

stri_split is a convenience function. It calls either stri_split_regex, stri_split_fixed, stri_split_coll, or stri_split_charclass, depending on the argument used.

Value

If simplify=FALSE (the default), then the functions return a list of character vectors.

Otherwise, stri_list2matrix with byrow=TRUE and n_min=n arguments is called on the resulting object. In such a case, a character matrix with an appropriate number of rows (according to the length of str, pattern, etc.) is returned. Note that stri_list2matrix's fill argument is set to an empty string and NA, for simplify equal to TRUE and NA, respectively.

Author(s)

Marek Gagolewski and other contributors

See Also

The official online manual of stringi at https://stringi.gagolewski.com/

Gagolewski M., stringi: Fast and portable character string processing in R, Journal of Statistical Software 103(2), 2022, 1-59, doi:10.18637/jss.v103.i02

Other search_split: about_search, stri_split_boundaries(), stri_split_lines()

Examples

stri_split_fixed('a_b_c_d', '_')
stri_split_fixed('a_b_c__d', '_')
stri_split_fixed('a_b_c__d', '_', omit_empty=TRUE)
stri_split_fixed('a_b_c__d', '_', n=2, tokens_only=FALSE) # 'a' & remainder
stri_split_fixed('a_b_c__d', '_', n=2, tokens_only=TRUE) # 'a' & 'b' only
stri_split_fixed('a_b_c__d', '_', n=4, omit_empty=TRUE, tokens_only=TRUE)
stri_split_fixed('a_b_c__d', '_', n=4, omit_empty=FALSE, tokens_only=TRUE)
stri_split_fixed('a_b_c__d', '_', omit_empty=NA)
stri_split_fixed(c('ab_c', 'd_ef_g', 'h', ''), '_', n=1, tokens_only=TRUE, omit_empty=TRUE)
stri_split_fixed(c('ab_c', 'd_ef_g', 'h', ''), '_', n=2, tokens_only=TRUE, omit_empty=TRUE)
stri_split_fixed(c('ab_c', 'd_ef_g', 'h', ''), '_', n=3, tokens_only=TRUE, omit_empty=TRUE)

stri_list2matrix(stri_split_fixed(c('ab,c', 'd,ef,g', ',h', ''), ',', omit_empty=TRUE))
stri_split_fixed(c('ab,c', 'd,ef,g', ',h', ''), ',', omit_empty=FALSE, simplify=TRUE)
stri_split_fixed(c('ab,c', 'd,ef,g', ',h', ''), ',', omit_empty=NA, simplify=TRUE)
stri_split_fixed(c('ab,c', 'd,ef,g', ',h', ''), ',', omit_empty=TRUE, simplify=TRUE)
stri_split_fixed(c('ab,c', 'd,ef,g', ',h', ''), ',', omit_empty=NA, simplify=NA)

stri_split_regex(c('ab,c', 'd,ef  ,  g', ',  h', ''),
   '\\p{WHITE_SPACE}*,\\p{WHITE_SPACE}*', omit_empty=NA, simplify=TRUE)

stri_split_charclass('Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet', '\\p{WHITE_SPACE}')
stri_split_charclass(' Lorem  ipsum dolor', '\\p{WHITE_SPACE}', n=3,
   omit_empty=c(FALSE, TRUE))

stri_split_regex('Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet',
   '\\p{Z}+') # see also stri_split_charclass