Regex and stringr: detect non alphanumeric character plus -

[budugulo]

library(tidyverse)

# toy data
df <- tibble(
  text = c("abcdefgh", "abcd-efg", "123d*-e", "567xyz", "'!abc")
)

df
#> # A tibble: 5 × 1
#>   text    
#>   <chr>   
#> 1 abcdefgh
#> 2 abcd-efg
#> 3 123d*-e 
#> 4 567xyz  
#> 5 '!abc

How can I mutate a new column, say, issue, which will identify if the columns text contains non-alphanumeric characters excluding the -.? In other words, the issue column will be NA if it only contains alphanumeric characters or -.

df_wanted
#> # A tibble: 5 × 2
#>   text     issue
#>   <chr>    <chr>
#> 1 abcdefgh <NA> 
#> 2 abcd-efg <NA> 
#> 3 123d*-e  *    
#> 4 567xyz   <NA> 
#> 5 '!abc    '!

[FactOREO]

Hey,

I think this serves your needs:

Data <- data.frame(text = c('abcdef','abcde-fgh','123d*-e','567xyz',"'!abc"))
library(stringr); library(dplyr)

Data |>
  rowwise() |>
  mutate(
    issue = case_when(
      str_detect(text,'[^a-zA-Z\\d\\-]') ~ str_extract_all(string = text, pattern = '[^a-zA-Z\\d\\-]', simplify = TRUE) |> paste(collapse = ''),
      TRUE ~ NA_character_
    )
  )
#> # A tibble: 5 × 2
#> # Rowwise: 
#>   text      issue
#>   <chr>     <chr>
#> 1 abcdef    <NA> 
#> 2 abcde-fgh <NA> 
#> 3 123d*-e   *    
#> 4 567xyz    <NA> 
#> 5 '!abc     '!

^{Created on 2022-11-04 with reprex v2.0.2}

The regex is created in a such a way, that it negates (using [^) all alphanumeric characters as well as the minus sign -.

Kind regards

[budugulo]

@FactOREO Thanks a lot. It does serve my needs!

I need a mini-lesson
Could you please explain the reason for using rowwise() and what the str_detect() part of the code is doing?

[FactOREO]

Sure The rowwise() is necessary because the str_extract_all() inside the case_when() function is vectorized. If you wouldn't do that, the result would be a combination of all (rowwise) results, so in this case *'! in both rows where the condition is true. rowwise() makes sure the str_extract_all() only extracts strings from the specific row we are at the moment.

The str_detect() checks, if we have non alphanumeric Strings inside the text column. You can think of the chain in the following way:

Take Data and add a column issue by checking rowwise, if there are nonalphanumeric characters (excluding the minus sign) inside text. If so, extract all those nonalphanumeric characters and paste them together in one chr scalar (hence the paste(collapse = ''). Otherwise insert NA_character_.

I hope this helps you understand the code above a bit better

[budugulo]

@FactOREO Many thanks for the excellent explanation! I now understand the code fully