R for Data Science, 2nd Edition

Chapter 14. Strings

Introduction

So far, you’ve used a bunch of strings without learning much about the details. Now it’s time to dive into them, learn what makes strings tick, and master some of the powerful string manipulation tools you have at your disposal.

We’ll begin with the details of creating strings and character vectors. You’ll then dive into creating strings from data, then the opposite: extracting strings from data. We’ll then discuss tools that work with individual letters. The chapter finishes with functions that work with individual letters and a brief discussion of where your expectations from English might steer you wrong when working with other languages.

We’ll keep working with strings in the next chapter, where you’ll learn more about the power of regular expressions.

Prerequisites

In this chapter, we’ll use functions from the stringr package, which is part of the core tidyverse. We’ll also use the babynames data since it provides some fun strings to manipulate.

library(tidyverse)
library(babynames)

You can quickly tell when you’re using a stringr function because all stringr functions start with str_. This is particularly useful if you use RStudio because typing str_ will trigger autocomplete, allowing you to jog your memory of the available functions.

Creating a String

We created strings in passing earlier in the book but didn’t discuss the details. ...