regmatches {base} | R Documentation

## Extract or Replace Matched Substrings

### Description

Extract or replace matched substrings from match data obtained by `regexpr`, `gregexpr` or `regexec`.

### Usage

    regmatches(x, m, invert = FALSE)
    regmatches(x, m, invert = FALSE) <- value

### Arguments

`x` | a character vector
`m` | an object with match data
`invert` | a logical: if `TRUE`, extract or replace the non-matched substrings.
`value` | an object with suitable replacement values for the matched or non-matched substrings (see `Details`).

### Details

If `invert` is `FALSE` (default), `regmatches` extracts the matched substrings as specified by the match data. For vector match data (as obtained from `regexpr`), empty matches are dropped; for list match data, empty matches give empty components (zero-length character vectors).

If `invert` is `TRUE`, `regmatches` extracts the non-matched substrings, i.e., the strings are split according to the matches similar to `strsplit` (for vector match data, at most a single split is performed).

If `invert` is `NA`, `regmatches` extracts both non-matched and matched substrings, always starting and ending with a non-match (empty if the match occurred at the beginning or the end, respectively).

Note that the match data can be obtained from regular expression matching on a modified version of `x` with the same numbers of characters.

The replacement function can be used for replacing the matched or non-matched substrings. For vector match data, if `invert` is `FALSE`, `value` should be a character vector with length the number of matched elements in `m`. Otherwise, it should be a list of character vectors with the same length as `m`, each as long as the number of replacements needed. Replacement coerces values to character or list and generously recycles values as needed. Missing replacement values are not allowed.

### Value

For `regmatches`, a character vector with the matched substrings if `m` is a vector and `invert` is `FALSE`. Otherwise, a list with the matched or/and non-matched substrings.

For `regmatches<-`, the updated character vector.

### Examples

    x <- c("A and B", "A, B and C", "A, B, C and D", "foobar")
    pattern <- "[[:space:]]*(,|and)[[:space:]]"
    ## Match data from regexpr()
    m <- regexpr(pattern, x)
    regmatches(x, m)
    regmatches(x, m, invert = TRUE)
    ## Match data from gregexpr()
    m <- gregexpr(pattern, x)
    regmatches(x, m)
    regmatches(x, m, invert = TRUE)

    ## Consider
    x <- "John (fishing, hunting), Paul (hiking, biking)"
    ## Suppose we want to split at the comma (plus spaces) between the
    ## persons, but not at the commas in the parenthesized hobby lists.
    ## One idea is to "blank out" the parenthesized parts to match the
    ## parts to be used for splitting, and extract the persons as the
    ## non-matched parts.
    ## First, match the parenthesized hobby lists.
    m <- gregexpr("\\([^)]*\\)", x)
    ## Write a little utility for creating blank strings with given numbers
    ## of characters.
    blanks <- function(n) strrep(" ", n)
    ## Create a copy of x with the parenthesized parts blanked out.
    s <- x
    regmatches(s, m) <- Map(blanks, lapply(regmatches(s, m), nchar))
    s
    ## Compute the positions of the split matches (note that we cannot call
    ## strsplit() on x with match data from s).
    m <- gregexpr(", *", s)
    ## And finally extract the non-matched parts.
    regmatches(x, m, invert = TRUE)

[Package base version 3.4.2 Index]