R - partial matches string

Question

I've a problem to do partial matches from a list of strings to a dataframe.

My df has this structure:

> df

    mrun                                        address stat

 8988741 cerro pedregal 8536 , Antofagasta, Antofagasta   OK

17625851              rancagua 2777 , Iquique, Tarapacá   OK

 9423953              picarte 4100 , Valdivia, Los Ríos   OK

 3459140           balmaceda 935 , Temuco, La Araucanía   OK

24507700             rancagua 1940, La Serena, Coquimbo   OK

and I have a list of strings with this values:

> address_list

c("balmaceda", "rancagua", "bombero garrido")

How can i select the rows than matched with any elements in the list?

This is my desire output:

> df_solution

    mrun                                        address stat

17625851              rancagua 2777 , Iquique, Tarapacá   OK

 3459140           balmaceda 935 , Temuco, La Araucanía   OK

24507700             rancagua 1940, La Serena, Coquimbo   OK

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Answer 1

First thing you need to do is to create matching variable in following format:

address_list<- paste(address_list, collapse = ",")
address_list<- gsub("," , "|" , address_list)
address_list<- c("balmaceda|rancagua|bombero|garrido")

Then using grep you can do a partial matching on your data and create a flag for rows to keep.

# grep(address_list,df$address) Try this and note the output for your understanding of `grep`

df$flag<- NA
df$flag[grep(address_list,df$address)]<- 1 #flag rows with matching values
df_new<- df[which(df$flag==1),]

R - partial matches string

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