R: Split up a string into pieces.

str_split {stringr} | R Documentation

## Split up a string into pieces.

### Description

Vectorised over `string` and `pattern`.

### Usage

    str_split(string, pattern, n = Inf, simplify = FALSE)

    str_split_fixed(string, pattern, n)

### Arguments

`string` | Input vector. Either a character vector, or something coercible to one.
`pattern` | Pattern to look for. The default interpretation is a regular expression, as described in stringi::stringi-search-regex. Control options with `regex()`. Match a fixed string (i.e. by comparing only bytes), using `fixed()`. This is fast, but approximate. Generally, for matching human text, you'll want `coll()` which respects character matching rules for the specified locale. Match character, word, line and sentence boundaries with `boundary()`. An empty pattern, "", is equivalent to `boundary("character")`.
`n` | number of pieces to return. Default (Inf) uses all possible split positions. For `str_split_fixed`, if n is greater than the number of pieces, the result will be padded with empty strings.
`simplify` | If `FALSE`, the default, returns a list of character vectors. If `TRUE` returns a character matrix.

### Value

For `str_split_fixed`, a character matrix with `n` columns. For `str_split`, a list of character vectors.

### See Also

`stri_split()` for the underlying implementation.

### Examples

    fruits <- c(
      "apples and oranges and pears and bananas",
      "pineapples and mangos and guavas"
    )

    str_split(fruits, " and ")
    str_split(fruits, " and ", simplify = TRUE)

    # Specify n to restrict the number of possible matches
    str_split(fruits, " and ", n = 3)
    str_split(fruits, " and ", n = 2)
    # If n greater than number of pieces, no padding occurs
    str_split(fruits, " and ", n = 5)

    # Use fixed to return a character matrix
    str_split_fixed(fruits, " and ", 3)
    str_split_fixed(fruits, " and ", 4)

[Package stringr version 1.3.1 Index]