R/countWords.R

In shirewoman2/Consultancy: Standardized tools for using R within the Simcyp Consultancy Team

#' Count the number of words in each item in a vector or list
#'
#' This function determines how many words are in a string; it assumes that
#' words are separated by either a space or a hyphen.
#'
#' @param x A vector or list. This can be any type of data.
#' @return Returns a vector of numbers that is the number of words present
#' @export
#'
#' @examples
#'
#' countWords("My cats' names are Lightning and Theo.")
#' countWords(list("My cats' names are Lightning and Theo.",
#'               "mein hindee seekh rahi hoon", 4.5, TRUE,
#'               "Pharmacogenetic variation in drug-metabolizing enzymes"))
#'
countWords <- function(x){
    
    # Checking whether there are any words
    WordsFound <-  stringr::str_detect(x, " |-")
    Count <- rep(NA, length(x))
    for(i in 1:length(x)){
        if(is.na(WordsFound[i])){
            Count[i] <- 1
        } else {
            if(WordsFound[i]){
                Count[i] <- sapply(stringr::str_split(x[i], " |-"), length)
            } else {
                Count[i] <- 1
            }
        }
    }
    
    return(Count)
}