regex multiple pattern with singular replacement

Question

I am trying to replace both "st." and "ste." with "st". Seems like the following should work but it does not:

require("stringr")
county <- c("st. landry", "ste. geneveve", "st. louis")
str_replace_all(county, c("st\\.", "ste\\."), "st")

I can but wanted to make it more explicit. I've actually picked up this Wickham habit myself. :) — Tyler Rinker, Sep 07 '12 at 15:17

score 68 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 07 '12 at 15:02

68

You can use | to mean "or"

> str_replace_all(county, "st\\.|ste\\.", "st")
[1] "st landry"   "st geneveve" "st louis"

Or in base R

> gsub("st\\.|ste\\.", "st", county)
[1] "st landry"   "st geneveve" "st louis"

answered Sep 07 '12 at 15:02

GSee

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Raberto · Answer 2 · 2019-03-04T18:00:22.560

2

> A<-"this string,  contains a handful of,  useless:  punctuation.  Some are to escape.  Aaargh! Some might be needed,  but I want none!"
> gsub(", |: |\\. |!","",A)
[1] "this string contains a handful of useless punctuation Some are to escape Aaargh Some might be needed but I want none"

edited Mar 04 '19 at 18:00

answered Mar 04 '19 at 17:15

Raberto

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Try `gsub("[[:punct:]]", "", A)` for this case. – Gregor Thomas Mar 04 '19 at 17:22

regex multiple pattern with singular replacement

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