How to return TRUE/FALSE based on text match with Regular Expression

Questions
#1

Hi,

I am trying to create a new column that reads TRUE if (at least) one word from a list of keywords is detected in a string in my base column (and FALSE if none of the keywords exist in the string).

I tried something simple (using the str_detect function) like this but it does not work…

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#2

str_detect function takes a regular expression so you can write something like this to make this work.

mutate(Description_new = str_detect(Description, “Assist|Retake”))

Let me know if this works for you. And if you are not big fan of regular expression like me, you could do something like this instead.

mutate(Description_new = Description %in% c(“Assist”,“Retake”))

Here’s an regular expression in R, only if you’re interested in.
https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/base/html/regex.html

1 Like
#3

1st option within str_detect works perfectly (I should have got that :blush:) - Many thanks…

2nd option using %in% does not seem to work for my case (seems to only work for complete matches, i.e., matching full string to full string…).

#4

Oops, sorry, my bad. For some reason, you were trying to do the exact match. You are right, in that case the 1st option is the one for you! Thanks for confirming!