Extract Non-Words
In qdapRegex: Regular Expression Removal, Extraction, and Replacement Tools

rm_non_words

R Documentation

Remove/Replace/Extract Non-Words

Description

rm_non_words - Remove/replace/extract non-words (Anything that's not a letter or apostrophe; also removes multiple white spaces) from a string.

Usage

rm_non_words(
  text.var,
  trim = !extract,
  clean = TRUE,
  pattern = "@rm_non_words",
  replacement = " ",
  extract = FALSE,
  dictionary = getOption("regex.library"),
  ...
)

ex_non_words(
  text.var,
  trim = !extract,
  clean = TRUE,
  pattern = "[^A-Za-z' ]+",
  replacement = " ",
  extract = TRUE,
  dictionary = getOption("regex.library"),
  ...
)

Arguments

`text.var`	The text variable.
`trim`	logical. If `TRUE` removes leading and trailing white spaces.
`clean`	trim logical. If `TRUE` extra white spaces and escaped character will be removed.
`pattern`	A character string containing a regular expression (or character string for `fixed = TRUE`) to be matched in the given character vector. Default, `@rm_non_words` uses the `rm_non_words` regex from the regular expression dictionary from the `dictionary` argument.
`replacement`	Replacement for matched `pattern` (*Note:* default is " ", whereas most qdapRegex functions replace with "").
`extract`	logical. If `TRUE` the non-words are extracted into a list of vectors.
`dictionary`	A dictionary of canned regular expressions to search within if `pattern` begins with `"@rm_"`.
`...`	Other arguments passed to `gsub`.

Value

Returns a character string with non-words removed.

Note

Setting the argument extract = TRUE is not very useful. Use the following setup instead (see Examples for a demonstration).

rm_default(x, pattern = "[^A-Za-z' ]", extract=TRUE)

Examples

x <- c(
    "I like 56 dogs!",
    "It's seventy-two feet from the px290.",
    NA,
    "What",
    "that1is2a3way4to5go6.",
    "What do you*% want?  For real%; I think you'll see.",
    "Oh some <html>code</html> to remove"
)

rm_non_words(x)
ex_non_words(x)

qdapRegex documentation built on April 4, 2025, 4:35 a.m.