R/postalcodes.R

In stevencarlislewalker/cleanPostalCodes: Utility for cleaning postal codes

##' Clean postal codes
##'
##' @param codes vector that is coercible to a character vector of
##' postal codes
##' @param blank should there be a blank space between the two parts
##' of the code?
##' @export
##' @examples
##' cds <- c("A1B 2C3", "missing",
##'          "---  A    5G*****HHH5J4",
##'          "E9J6H2nnnn", "e6n8l0")
##' cleanPostalCodes(cds, TRUE)
##' cleanPostalCodes(cds, FALSE)
cleanPostalCodes <- function(codes,
                             blank = TRUE) {
    pat <- '^(.*?)([A-Z][0-9][A-Z])(.*?)([0-9][A-Z][0-9])(.*?)$'
    repl <- ifelse(blank, '\\2 \\4', '\\2\\4')
    codes <-
        codes %>%
        as.character() %>%
        toupper() %>%
        gsub(pattern     = '[^0-9A-Z]',
             replacement = '') %>%
        sub( pattern     = pat,
             replacement = repl)
    codes[!grepl(pat, codes)] <- NA
    return(codes)
}