FindReplace: Replace multiple patterns found in a character string column...
In DataCombine: Tools for Easily Combining and Cleaning Data Sets

FindReplace allows you to find and replace multiple character string patterns in a data frame's column.

1 2	FindReplace(data, Var, replaceData, from = "from", to = "to", exact = TRUE, vector = FALSE)

`data`	data frame with the column you would like to replace string patterns.
`Var`	character string naming the column you would like to replace string patterns. The column must be of class `character` or `factor`.
`replaceData`	a data frame with at least two columns. One contains the patterns to replace and the other contains their replacement. Note: the pattern and its replacement must be in the same row.
`from`	character string naming the column with the patterns you would like to replace.
`to`	character string naming the column with the the pattern replacements.
`exact`	logical. Indicates whether to only replace exact pattern matches (`TRUE`) or not (`FALSE`).
`vector`	logical. If `TRUE` then the replacement is returned as a single vector. If `FALSE` then the whole data frame is returned.

# Create original data
ABData <- data.frame(a = c("London, UK", "Oxford, UK", "Berlin, DE",
                     "Hamburg, DE", "Oslo, NO"),
                     b = c(8, 0.1, 3, 2, 1))

# Create replacements data frame
Replaces <- data.frame(from = c("UK", "DE"), to = c("England", "Germany"))

# Replace patterns and return full data frame
ABNewDF <- FindReplace(data = ABData, Var = "a", replaceData = Replaces,
                     from = "from", to = "to", exact = FALSE)

# Replace patterns and return the Var as a vector
ABNewVector <- FindReplace(data = ABData, Var = "a", replaceData = Replaces,
                     from = "from", to = "to", vector = TRUE)