[R] Split strings based on multiple patterns

[Joe Ceradini]

Thanks for the additional approach, Greg. I had success with Gabor's
recommendation but will take a look at gsubfn as well.

Joe

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 10:19 AM, Greg Snow <538280 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would suggest looking at the strapply function in the gsubfn
> package.  That gives you more flexibility in specifying what to look
> for in the structure of the data, then extract only those pieces that
> you want.
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 5:16 PM, Joe Ceradini <joeceradini at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Afternoon,
> >
> > I unfortunately inherited a dataframe with a column that has many fields
> > smashed together. My goal is to split the strings in the column into
> > separate columns based on patterns.
> >
> > Example of what I'm working with:
> >
> > ugly <- c("Water temp:14: F Waterbody type:Permanent Lake/Pond: Water
> > pH:Unkwn:
> > Conductivity:Unkwn: Water color: Clear: Water turbidity: clear:
> > Manmade:no  Permanence:permanent:  Max water depth: <3: Primary
> > substrate: Silt/Mud: Evidence of cattle grazing: none:
> > Shoreline Emergent Veg(%): 1-25: Fish present: yes: Fish species: unkwn:
> no
> > amphibians observed")
> > ugly
> >
> > Far as I can tell, there is not a single pattern that would work for
> > splitting this string. Splitting on ":" is close but not quite
> consistent.
> > Each of these attributes should be a separate column:
> >
> > attributes <- c("Water temp", "Waterbody type", "Water pH",
> "Conductivity",
> > "Water color", "Water turbidity", "Manmade", "Permanence", "Max water
> > depth", "Primary substrate", "Evidence of cattle grazing", "Shoreline
> > Emergent Veg(%)", "Fish present", "Fish species")
> >
> > So, conceptually, I want to do something like this, where the string is
> > split for each of the patterns in attributes. However, strsplit only uses
> > the 1st value of attributes
> > strsplit(ugly, attributes)
> >
> > Should I loop through the values of "attributes"?
> > Is there an argument in strsplit I'm missing that will do what I want?
> > Different approach altogether?
> >
> > Thanks! Happy Friday.
> > Joe
> >
> >         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >
> > ______________________________________________
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> > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/
> posting-guide.html
> > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
> 538280 at gmail.com
>



-- 
Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
Zoology and Physiology Dept.
University of Wyoming
JoeCeradini at gmail.com / 914.707.8506
wyocoopunit.org

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