editCharCols function

Replace strings in character character columns of a data set

editCharCols(data, pattern, replacement, as.fun, ...)

Arguments

• data: The data set to edit.
• pattern: Pattern to search for in character columns. Passed to gsub(). By default, gsub() works with regular expressions. See ... for how to disable this if you want to replace a specific string.
• replacement: pattern or string to replace with. Passed to gsub().
• as.fun: The default is to return data as a data.frame. Pass a function (say tibble::as_tibble) in as.fun to convert to something else. If data.tables are wanted, use as.fun="data.table". The default can be configured using NMdataConf.
• ...: Additional arguments passed to gsub(). Especially, notice fixed=TRUE will disable interpretation of pattern and replace as regular expressions.

Returns

a data.frame

Examples

### remove commas from character columns 
dat <- data.frame(A=1:3,text=cc(a,"a,d","g"))
editCharCols(dat,pattern=",","")
### factors are not edited but result in an error
## Not run:

dat <- data.frame(A=1:3,text=cc(a,"a,d",g),fac=cl("a","a,d","g"))
editCharCols(dat,pattern=",","")
## End(Not run)