patterns {data.table} | R Documentation

## Obtain matching indices corresponding to patterns

### Description

`patterns` returns the matching indices in the argument `cols` corresponding to the regular expression patterns provided. The patterns must be supported by `grep`.

From `v1.9.6`, `melt.data.table` has an enhanced functionality in which `measure.vars` argument can accept a list of column names and melt them into separate columns. See the `Efficient reshaping using data.tables` vignette linked below to learn more.

### Usage

    patterns(..., cols=character(0))

### Arguments

`...` | A set of regular expression patterns.
`cols` | A character vector of names to which each pattern is matched.

### See Also

`melt`, https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/wiki/Getting-started

### Examples

    DT = data.table(x1 = 1:5, x2 = 6:10, y1 = letters[1:5], y2 = letters[6:10])
    # melt all columns that begin with 'x' & 'y', respectively, into separate columns
    melt(DT, measure.vars = patterns("^x", "^y", cols=names(DT)))
    # when used with melt, 'cols' is implictly assumed to be names of input
    # data.table, if not provided.
    melt(DT, measure.vars = patterns("^x", "^y"))

[Package data.table version 1.12.2 Index]