Argument Matching

In strex: Extra String Manipulation Functions

knitr::opts_chunk$set(
  collapse = TRUE,
  comment = "#>"
)

Ignoring case

base

The base function match.arg() is good, but it doesn't offer the possiblity to ignore case during argument matching. Sometimes it's good to ignore case; for example, if you're matching the arguments c("yes", "no"), there's no need to worry about case.

base::match.arg("Y", c("yes", "no"))

strex

The default behaviour of strex::match_arg() is to observe case, but case ignorance can be turned on with ignore_case = TRUE.

strex::match_arg("Y", c("yes", "no"))
strex::match_arg("Y", c("yes", "no"), ignore_case = TRUE)

Error Messages

You can begin to see above that the error message from strex::match_arg() are more informative and nicely formatted. Here are a few more examples.

No matches

choices <- c("Apples", "Pears", "Bananas", "Oranges", "Avocados", "Apricots")
match.arg("Q", choices)
strex::match_arg("Q", choices)

Multiple matches

match.arg("A", choices)
strex::match_arg("A", choices)

Wrong arg length

match.arg(c("A", "a"), choices)
strex::match_arg(c("A", "a"), choices)

Duplicate elements in choices

choices <- c(choices, "Pears")
match.arg("P", choices)
strex::match_arg("P", choices)

Not specifying choices

It's OK not to specify choices in one circumstance: when arg is passed as a default argument of another function.

myword <- function(w = c("abacus", "baseball", "candy")) {
  w <- strex::match_arg(w)
  w
}
myword()
myword("b")
myword("c")

This is very strict though, only the symbol for the default argument can be passed, not any variant of it, not even something which evaluates to the same thing.

myword <- function(w = c("abacus", "baseball", "candy")) {
  w <- strex::match_arg(identity(w))
  w
}
myword("b")
myword <- function(w = c("abacus", "baseball", "candy")) {
  w <- strex::match_arg(as.character(w))
  w
}
myword("b")

strex documentation built on Nov. 2, 2023, 6:04 p.m.