Extract string from text after matching - regex R

Question

I have an input text

   inputQ <- "What can I do ..my baby has rash all over. Suggest good rash cream"

I have a list of terms

terms <- c("diaper","cloth diaper","rash pants","rash","baby wipes","rash cream")

I wish to exact match one of the terms and return it as well I tried using for loop, but is there a better method

Result should be

 rash cream

stored in matchedTerm

Why do you want "rash cream" but not "rash" returned? What did you try? — talat, Feb 17 '17 at 08:16
Possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33856148/regex-in-r-extracting-words-from-a-string or http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33784376/extract-word-in-string-in-r — akrun, Feb 17 '17 at 09:39

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 17 '17 at 08:27

5

You can try to get all the matches, then check for the one with the biggest number of characters:

wh_match <- names(unlist(sapply(terms, grep, inputQ)))
wh_match[which.max(nchar(wh_match))]
# [1] "rash cream"

answered Feb 17 '17 at 08:27

Cath

1 Answers1