R: Remove Punctuation Marks from a Text Document

removePunctuation {tm} | R Documentation

## Remove Punctuation Marks from a Text Document

### Description

Remove punctuation marks from a text document.

### Usage

    ## S3 method for class 'character'
    removePunctuation(x,
                      preserve_intra_word_contractions = FALSE,
                      preserve_intra_word_dashes = FALSE,
                      ucp = FALSE, ...)
    ## S3 method for class 'PlainTextDocument'
    removePunctuation(x, ...)

### Arguments

`x` | a character vector or text document.
`preserve_intra_word_contractions` | a logical specifying whether intra-word contractions should be kept.
`preserve_intra_word_dashes` | a logical specifying whether intra-word dashes should be kept.
`ucp` | a logical specifying whether to use Unicode character properties for determining punctuation characters. If `FALSE` (default), characters in the ASCII `[:punct:]` class are taken; if `TRUE`, the characters with Unicode general category `P` (Punctuation).
`...` | arguments to be passed to or from methods; in particular, from the `PlainTextDocument` method to the `character` method.

### Value

The character or text document `x` without punctuation marks (besides intra-word contractions (') and intra-word dashes (-) if `preserve_intra_word_contractions` and `preserve_intra_word_dashes` are set, respectively).

### See Also

`getTransformations` to list available transformation (mapping) functions.

`regex` shows the class `[:punct:]` of punctuation characters.

http://unicode.org/reports/tr44/#General_Category_Values.

### Examples

    data("crude")
    inspect(crude[[14]])
    inspect(removePunctuation(crude[[14]]))
    inspect(removePunctuation(crude[[14]],
                              preserve_intra_word_contractions = TRUE,
                              preserve_intra_word_dashes = TRUE))

[Package tm version 0.7-5 Index]