A Beginner Guide to String Pattern Matching in R by Regular Expression Part 1-1

jDataLab

3 minute read

Before reading this post, read the previous part.

A regular expression is a pattern that describes a group of strings.

1. Escaping Characters

\: Escape metacharacters in regular expression, i.e.

$ * + . ? [ ] ^ { } | ( ) \`

As \ itself needs to be escaped in R, R requires double backslash to escape these metacharacters, like \?.

2. Special Metacharacters

  • \\t : Tab

  • \\n : New line

  • \\v : Vertical tab

  • \\f : Form feed

  • \\r : Carriage return

3. Quantifiers

Quantifiers specify how many times that the preceding pattern should occur.

  • * : matches at least 0 times.
  • + : matches at least 1 times.
  • ? : matches at most 1 times.
  • {n} : matches exactly n times.
  • {n,} : matches at least n times.
  • {,m} : matches at most m times.
  • {n,m} : matches between n and m times.

Exercise

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4. Position Anchors

  • ^ : Start of the string.
  • $ : End of the string.
  • \\b : Empty string at either edge of a word.
  • \\B : Empty string, not at the edge of a word.
  • \\< : Beginning of a word
  • \\> : End of a word
eyJsYW5ndWFnZSI6InIiLCJzYW1wbGUiOiJzdHJpbmdzIDwtIGMoXCJhYmNkXCIsIFwiY2RhYlwiLCBcImNhYmRcIiwgXCJjIGFiZFwiLCBcIiphYlwiKVxuXG5ncmVwKFwiXmFiXCIsIHN0cmluZ3MsIHZhbHVlID0gVFJVRSlcblxuZ3JlcChcImFiJFwiLCBzdHJpbmdzLCB2YWx1ZSA9IFRSVUUpXG5cbmdyZXAoXCJcXFxcYmFiXCIsIHN0cmluZ3MsIHZhbHVlID0gVFJVRSlcblxuZ3JlcChcIlxcXFw8YVwiLCBzdHJpbmdzLCB2YWx1ZSA9IFRSVUUpXG5cbmdyZXAoXCJjXFxcXD5cIiwgc3RyaW5ncywgdmFsdWUgPSBUUlVFKSJ9

5. Characters and Operators

  • . : Any single character except \n

  • [...] : a permitted character list. Use - inside the brackets to specify a range of characters.

  • [^...] : an excluded character list. Match any characters except those inside the square brackets.

  • |: an OR operator, matches patterns on either side of the |.

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6. Character Classes

  • [[:digit:]] or \\d or [0-9] : digits 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  • \\D or [^0-9] : non-digits

  • [[:lower:]] or [a-z] : lower-case letters

  • [[:upper:]] or [A-Z] : upper-case letters

  • [[:alpha:]] or [[:lower:][:upper:]] or [A-z] : alphabetic characters

  • [[:alnum:]] or [[:alpha:][:digit:]] or [A-z0-9]: alphanumeric characters

  • \\w or [[:alnum:]_] or [A-z0-9_] : word characters include alphanumeric characters (0-9,a-z,A-Z), (-, - and -) and underscores (_).

  • \\W or [^A-z0-9_] : non-word characters

  • [[:xdigit:]] or [0-9A-Fa-f] : hexadecimal digits (base 16) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F a b c d e f

  • [[:blank:]] : space and tab

  • [[:space:]] or `\s' : space characters: tab, newline, vertical tab, form feed, carriage return, space

  • \\S : not space characters

  • [[:punct:]] : punctuation characters

! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? @ [  ] ^ _ ` { | } ~

  • [[:graph:]] or [[:alnum:][:punct:]] : graphical (human readable) characters

  • [[:print:]] or [[:alnum:][:punct:]\\s] : printable characters

  • [[:cntrl:]] or \\c : control characters, like \n or \r etc.

Exercise:

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Continue to Part 3.