[R] match() function with a little enhancement

[Nicolas Prune]

Dear R users,

I was wondering if R has a built-in function doing the following :

my_match(values_vector,lookup_vector)
{
for each value of values_vector :

if value %in% lookup_vector, then value is unchanged
else, value is changed the the closest element of lookup_vector, "closest"
meaning "the one that would come just after if we sorted them using order()"
}

For example :

values <- c("Kiwis", "Bananas", "Ananas", "Cherries", "Peer")
vector <- c("Oranges", "Bananas", "Apples", "Cherries", "Lemons")

my_match(values, vector) should return :

c("Lemons","Bananas","Apples","Cherries",NA)

I currently use a home-made function for this, but it is quite slow on large
sets, msotly because I did not manage to avoid using a loop.

Many thanks for your ideas,
Nicolas