validatetools: Tools for validation rules

In validatetools: Checking and Simplifying Validation Rule Sets

Tools for validation rules

Description

validatetools is a utility package for managing validation rule sets that are defined with validate::validate(). In production systems validation rule sets tend to grow organically and accumulate redundant or (partially) contradictory rules. validatetools helps to identify problems with large rule sets and includes simplification methods for resolving issues.

Problem detection

The following methods allow for problem detection:

• is_infeasible() checks a rule set for feasibility, i.e. if it contains contradicting rules making it infeasible. An infeasible system must be corrected to be useful, because it means that no record can satisfy all rules.

• detect_infeasible_rules() detects which rules cause infeasibility.

• detect_contradicting_if_rules() detects which if rules are conflicting.

• detect_boundary_num() shows for each numerical variable the allowed range of values.

• detect_boundary_cat() shows for each categorical variable the allowed range of values.

• detect_fixed_variables() shows variables whose value is fixated by the rule set.

• detect_redundancy() shows which rules are already implied by other rules.

Simplifying rule set

The following methods detect possible simplifications and apply them to a rule set.

• substitute_values(): replace variables with constants.

• simplify_fixed_variables(): substitute the fixed variables with their values in a rule set.

• simplify_conditional(): remove redundant (parts of) conditional rules.

• remove_redundancy(): remove redundant rules.

Author(s)

Maintainer: Edwin de Jonge [e-mail] (ORCID)

Authors:

• Mark van der Loo [e-mail]

Other contributors:

• Jacco Daalmans [contributor]

References

Statistical Data Cleaning with Applications in R, Mark van der Loo and Edwin de Jonge, ISBN: 978-1-118-89715-7

See Also

Useful links:

• https://github.com/data-cleaning/validatetools

• Report bugs at https://github.com/data-cleaning/validatetools/issues

validatetools documentation built on Aug. 8, 2025, 6:30 p.m.