subNonStandardNames: sub for nonstandard names
In Ecfun: Functions for Ecdat

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Author(s) See Also Examples

sub(nonStandardNames[, 1], nonStandardNames[, 2], x)

Accented characters common in non-English languages often get mangled in different ways by different software. For example, the "e" in "Andre" may carry an accent that gets replaced by other characters by different software. This function first converts "Andr*" with "Andr_" for and character "*" not in standardCharacters. It then looks for "Andr_" in nonStandardNames. By default, it will find that and replace it with "Andre".

subNonStandardNames(x,
   standardCharacters=c(letters, LETTERS, ' ','.', '?', '!', 
      ',', 0:9,   '/', '*', '$', '%', '\"', "\'", '-', '+', '&', '_', ';', 
      '(', ')', '[', ']', '\n'),
   replacement='_',
   gsubList=list(list(pattern='\\\\\\\\|\\\\',
      replacement='\"')),
   removeSecondLine=TRUE,
   nonStandardNames=Ecdat::nonEnglishNames, 
   namesNotFound="attr.replacement", ...)

`x`	character vector or matrix or a `data.frame` of character vectors in which it is desired replace `nonStandardNames[, 1]` in `subNonStandardCharacters(x, ...)` with the corresponding element of `nonStandardNames[, 2]`.
`standardCharacters, replacement, gsubList, ...`	arguments passed to `subNonStandardCharacters`
`removeSecondLine`	logical: If TRUE, delete anything following "\n" and return it as an attribute "secondLine".
`nonStandardNames`	data.frame or character matrix with two columns: Replace any substring of `x` matching `nonStandardNames[, 1]` with the corresponding elemeng of `nonStandardNames[, 2]`
`namesNotFound`	character vecvtor describing how to treat substitions not found in `nonStandardNames[, 1]`: "attr.replacement": Return an attribute "namesNotFound" with `grep(replacement, subNonStandardCharacters(...))`, if any. "attr.notFound": Return an attribute "namesNotFound" with `x != subNonStandardCharacters(...)`, if any. "print": Print the elements of `x` "notFound" per either "attr.replacement" or "attr.notFound", as requested. "": Do not report any "notFound" elements of `x`. NOTE: x = "_" will be identified by "attr.replacement" but not by "attr.notfound" assuming the default value for `replacement`.

1. removeSecondLine

2. x. <- subNonStandardCharacters(x, standardCharacters, replacement, ...)

3. Loop over all rows of nonStandardNames substituting anything matching nonStandardNames[i, 1] with nonStandardNames[i, 2].

4. Eliminate leading and trailing blanks.

5. if(is.matrix(x)) return a matrix; if(is.data.frame(x)) return a data.frame(..., stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

NOTE: On 13 May 2013 Jeff Newmiller at the University of California, Davis, wrote, 'I think it is a fools errand to think that you can automatically "normalize" arbitrary Unicode characters to an ASCII form that everyone will agree on.' (This was a reply on r-help@r-project.org, subject: "Re: [R] Matching names with non- English characters".) Doubtless someone has software to do a better job of this than what this function does, but I've so far been unable to find it in R. If you know of a better solution to this problem, I'd be pleased to hear from you. Spencer Graves

a character vector with all nonStandardCharacters replaced first by replacement and then by the second column of nonStandardNames for any that match the first column. If a secondLine is found on any elements, it is returned as a "secondLine" attribute. If any names with nonStandardCharacters are not found in nonStandardNames[, 1], they are identifed in an optional attribute per the namesNotFound argument.

Spencer Graves

sub nonEnglishNames subNonStandardCharacters stripBlanks

##
## 1.  Example 
##
tstSNSN <- c('Raul', 'Ra`l', 'Torres,Raul', 'Torres, Ra`l',
           "Robert C. \\Bobby\\\\", 'Ed  \n --Vacancy', '', '  ')

#  confusion in character sets can create
#  names like Names[2]
##
## 2.  subNonStandardNames(vector)
##

SNS2 <- subNonStandardNames(tstSNSN)
SNS2

# check 
SNS2. <- c('Raul', 'Raul', 'Torres,Raul', 'Torres, Raul',
            'Robert C. "Bobby"', 'Ed', '', '')
attr(SNS2., 'secondLine') <- c(rep(NA, 5), ' --Vacancy', NA, NA)


all.equal(SNS2, SNS2.)

##
## 3.  subNonStandardNames(matrix)
##
tstmat <- parseName(tstSNSN, surnameFirst=TRUE)
submat <- subNonStandardNames(tstmat)

# check 
SNSmat <- parseName(SNS2., surnameFirst=TRUE)

all.equal(submat, SNSmat)


##
## 4.  subNonStandardNames(data.frame)
##
tstdf <- as.data.frame(tstmat)
subdf <- subNonStandardNames(tstdf)

# check 
SNSdf <- as.data.frame(SNSmat, stringsAsFactors=FALSE)

all.equal(subdf, SNSdf)


##
## 5.  namesNotFound 
##
noSub <- subNonStandardNames('xx_x')

# check 
noSub. <- 'xx_x'
attr(noSub., 'namesNotFound') <- 'xx_x'

all.equal(noSub, noSub.)