Assign to a vector only where a regular expression matches

This takes two arguments, just like gsub: a pattern and a replacement. It overwrites the entire element wherever the pattern matches. If you want to substitute only the matched portion, use %regex=% instead; to replace matches with nothing (""), use %-% or %-=%.

Usage

x %regex<-% value

Arguments

x

a character vector

value

a length-2 character vector of the form c(pattern, replacement)

Value

Used for the side effect of reassigning x in the calling environment; returns the modified x invisibly.

Author

Ben Wiseman, benjamin.h.wiseman@gmail.com

Examples

x <- c("a1b", "b1", "c", "d0")

# overwrite any element containing a digit
x %regex<-% c("\\d+", "x")
print(x)
#> [1] "x" "x" "c" "x"
# "x" "b" "c" "x"