rm_url: Remove/Replace/Extract URLs

In qdapRegex: Regular Expression Removal, Extraction, and Replacement Tools

Remove/Replace/Extract URLs

Description

rm_url - Remove/replace/extract URLs from a string.

rm_twitter_url - Remove/replace/extract Twitter Short URLs from a string.

Usage

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

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

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

ex_twitter_url(
  text.var,
  trim = !extract,
  clean = TRUE,
  pattern = "@rm_twitter_url",
  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_url uses the rm_url regex from the regular expression dictionary from the dictionary argument.
replacement	Replacement for matched pattern.
extract	logical. If TRUE the URLs 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.

Details

The default regex pattern "(http[^ ]*)|(www\.[^ ]*)" is more liberal. More constrained versions can be accessed via pattern = "@rm_url2" & pattern = "@rm_url3" see Examples).

Value

Returns a character string with URLs removed.

References

The more constrained url regular expressions ("@rm_url2" and "@rm_url3" was adapted from imme_emosol's response: https://mathiasbynens.be/demo/url-regex

See Also

gsub, stri_extract_all_regex

Other rm_ functions: rm_abbreviation(), rm_between(), rm_bracket(), rm_caps(), rm_caps_phrase(), rm_citation(), rm_citation_tex(), rm_city_state(), rm_city_state_zip(), rm_date(), rm_default(), rm_dollar(), rm_email(), rm_emoticon(), rm_endmark(), rm_hash(), rm_nchar_words(), rm_non_ascii(), rm_non_words(), rm_number(), rm_percent(), rm_phone(), rm_postal_code(), rm_repeated_characters(), rm_repeated_phrases(), rm_repeated_words(), rm_tag(), rm_time(), rm_title_name(), rm_white(), rm_zip()

Examples

x <- " I like www.talkstats.com and http://stackoverflow.com"
rm_url(x)
rm_url(x, replacement = '<a href="\\1" target="_blank">\\1</a>')
ex_url(x)

ex_url(x, pattern = "@rm_url2")
ex_url(x, pattern = "@rm_url3")

## Remove Twitter Short URL
x <- c("download file from http://example.com", 
         "this is the link to my website http://example.com", 
         "go to http://example.com from more info.",
         "Another url ftp://www.example.com",
         "And https://www.example.net",
         "twitter type: t.co/N1kq0F26tG",
         "still another one https://t.co/N1kq0F26tG :-)")

rm_twitter_url(x)
ex_twitter_url(x)

## Combine removing Twitter URLs and standard URLs
rm_twitter_n_url <- rm_(pattern=pastex("@rm_twitter_url", "@rm_url"))
rm_twitter_n_url(x)
rm_twitter_n_url(x, extract=TRUE)

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