fuzzyMatches: Fuzzy matching
In HELP: Tools for HELP data analysis

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Author(s) See Also Examples

Match and reinterpret a vector in terms of a second vector, essentially using the second vector as a key to interpret the first.

1	fuzzyMatches(x, y, ...)

x

vector, the values to be matched.

y

vector, the values to be matched against.

...

Arguments to be passed to methods (see getSamples-methods):

strict: logical indicating whether or not to allow restrict matching. If FALSE, numerical indices in x can reference values in y. If TRUE (default), only exact matches of values in x and y will be used.
keep: logical indicating whether or not to preserve non-matching values from x (when strict = FALSE). If TRUE (default), all values in x will be returned with those that match values in y replaced by the corresponding values in y. If FALSE, non-matching values will be removed.
alias: logical indicating whether or not to return aliased values (default is TRUE). If FALSE, numerical indices will be returned with a value of nomatch for non-matching values in x.
match.all: character value, specifying a special value to be interpreted as a match for ALL values in y (default is "*"). Any occurence of match.all in x will be replaced by all values in y.
nomatch: numerical, specifying a value for non-matching values in codex when strict = FALSE, keep = TRUE, and alias = FALSE.
na.rm: a logical value indicating whether NA values should be stripped before the computation proceeds (default is TRUE). If FALSE any missing values in x will cause an error and missing values in codey may cause unexpected behavior.
\dots: other arguments not handled at this time.

This function employs multiple stages of matching between two vectors. First, the values in x are matched against y to find any exact matches. Next, numerical values in x are used to retrieve the corresponding positions in y. All unmatched values may be retained or dropped (depending on the value of keep), and a list of unique values is returned. Note that a value of match.all in x will be interpreted as a match for ALL values in y, and therefore replaced with the contents of y.

Returns a vector of unique values in x, that match values in y according to the parameters described above.

Reid F. Thompson (rthompso@aecom.yu.edu)

fuzzyMatches-methods, match

a <- c(1, "four", "missing")
b <- c("one", "two", "three", "four")
fuzzyMatches(a, b)
fuzzyMatches(a, b, strict=FALSE)
fuzzyMatches(a, b, strict=FALSE, alias=FALSE)
fuzzyMatches(a, b, strict=FALSE, keep=FALSE)