cleanup_spaces: Clean up the use of whitespace in a character vector
In wai-wong-reimagine/mclm: Mastering Corpus Linguistics Methods

Description Usage Arguments Value Examples

The function cleanup_spaces takes as its input a character vector x, and returns a copy of x in which the use of whitespace characters has been ‘normalized’. More specifically, this ‘normalization’ entails that each uninterrrupted stretch of whitespace characters, i.e. each sequence of one or more consecutive whitespace characters, is replaced by a single SPACE character. Moreover, in case of the argument specification remove_leading = TRUE, all leading whitespace is removed, and in case of the argument specification remove_trailing = TRUE, all trailing whitespace is removed.

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cleanup_spaces(x,
               remove_leading = TRUE,
               remove_trailing = TRUE)

`x`	the argument `x` contains the character vector to which the cleaning up has to be applied.
`remove_leading`	in case of the setting `remove_leading = TRUE`, all leading whitespace is completely removed; in case of the setting `remove_leading = FALSE`, any leading whitespace is ‘normalized’, as explained above, but not completely removed.
`remove_trailing`	in case of the setting `remove_trailing = TRUE`, all trailing whitespace is completely removed; in case of the setting `remove_trailing = FALSE`, any trailing whitespace is ‘normalized’, as explained above, but not completely removed.

Returns a character vector that is a copy of x in which all whitespace is ‘normalized’.

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txt <- " A \t small   example \n with redundant whitespace   "
cleanup_spaces(txt)
cleanup_spaces(txt, remove_leading = FALSE, remove_trailing = FALSE)