R for Everyone: Advanced Analytics and Graphics, 2nd Edition

16. Manipulating Strings

Strings (character data) often need to be constructed or deconstructed to identify observations, preprocess text, combine information or satisfy any number of other needs. R offers functions for building strings, like paste and sprintf. It also provides a number of functions for using regular expressions and examining text data, although for those purposes it is better to use Hadley Wickham’s stringr package.

16.1 paste

The first function new R users reach for when putting together strings is paste. This function takes a series of strings, or expressions that evaluate to strings, and puts them together into one string. We start by putting together three simple strings.

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> paste("Hello"