Compare row values to column in dataframe for partial match using R

Question

I have a dataframe

Name
1.Started
2.Home
3.Signout

I want to compare with another column in another dataframe

Df
1.help/services/Home 
2./msoffice/home 
3./windows.support

Expected output:

False
True
False

This shows Home from name exists in df. It's matching partially with another entire column.

`sapply(Name[[1]], function(x) grepl(x, Df[[1]], ignore.case = TRUE))`. — Rui Barradas, Mar 23 '20 at 06:04
Does this answer your question? [dplyr: inner\_join with a partial string match](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32914357/dplyr-inner-join-with-a-partial-string-match) — MarkusN, Mar 23 '20 at 06:44

Ronak Shah · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-26T03:41:42.857

0

We can compare Name from df1 and use basename to get last part of the string.

df1$Name %in% basename(df2$col)
#[1] FALSE  TRUE FALSE

data

Assuming the dataframes are df1 and df2 as below.

df1 <- structure(list(Name = c("Started", "Home", "Signout")), row.names = c(NA, 
      -3L), class = "data.frame")

df2 <- structure(list(col = c("help/services/Home", "/msoffice/home", 
"/windows.support")), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -3L))

edited Mar 26 '20 at 03:41

answered Mar 23 '20 at 08:24

Ronak Shah

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Thanks for the solution, What if the number of rows in df1 is less than df2? How to proceed in that case – maddie Mar 23 '20 at 14:10
@maddie How do you want to compare in that case? Why row 1 is `FALSE` and row 2 is `TRUE` ? – Ronak Shah Mar 23 '20 at 14:54
If row 1 is not present in df2 then FALSE , if row 2 is present in any of df2 rows then TRUR – maddie Mar 26 '20 at 03:08
@maddie you could use `df1$Name %in% basename(df2$col)` which will work for any number of rows. Is that what you want? Also updated the answer. – Ronak Shah Mar 26 '20 at 03:39
Thanks @Ronak Shah – maddie Mar 27 '20 at 15:14

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 23 '20 at 17:46

We can use grepl

mapply(grepl, tolower(df1$Name), tolower(df2$col))
#FALSE    TRUE   FALSE

data

df1 <- structure(list(Name = c("Started", "Home", "Signout")), row.names = c(NA, 
      -3L), class = "data.frame")

df2 <- structure(list(col = c("help/services/Home", "/msoffice/home", 
"/windows.support")), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -3L))

Compare row values to column in dataframe for partial match using R

2 Answers2

data