Find combinations of words in two vectors

Question

I have a long list of words contained in two vectors

The first vector looks like this:

x <- c("considerably", "much", "far")

The second vector looks like this:

y <- c("higher", "lower")

I need a vector returned, which lists possible combinations of words from each vector. Using x and y, I would need this vector returned

[1] "considerably higher" "considerably lower"  "much higher"         "much lower"         
[5] "far higher"          "far lower"

Therefore words in vector x must come before words in vector y. Is there a quick way of doing this?

+1 for example input and desired output (a relief after some recent questions from other OPs!) — Simon O'Hanlon, Jun 10 '13 at 16:25

Simon O'Hanlon · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-10T16:32:08.600

6

You could use outer with paste, I think that will be quite quick!

as.vector( t( outer( x , y , "paste"  ) ) )
# [1] "considerably higher" "considerably lower"  "much higher"        
# [4] "much lower"          "far higher"          "far lower"

edited Jun 10 '13 at 16:32

answered Jun 10 '13 at 16:24

Simon O'Hanlon

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 10 '13 at 16:43

2

You could use expand.grid.

sort(apply(X = expand.grid(x, y), MARGIN = 1, FUN = function(x) paste(x[1], x[2], sep = " ")))

answered Jun 10 '13 at 16:43

FXQuantTrader

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Find combinations of words in two vectors

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