Remove characters from data frame — rm

Parts of characters can be removed based on a vector of removal characters. When these characters are present in the data frame they will be removed. Selection area can include the full data frame or a subset of columns. When working with images, this can be helpful to remove extra characters from image IDs, or anywhere else where you want to remove specific characters from your data.

Usage

rm_chr(data, rm, full_selection = TRUE, cols)

Arguments

data: A data frame.
rm: The parts of characters to be removed from the data frame. Can be a single element or a vector of elements.
full_selection: If full_selection = TRUE parts of characters matching the rm argument will be removed from entire data frame. If full_selection = FALSE only the specified columns will have the parts of characters matching the rm argument removed.
cols: If full_selection = FALSE this argument will specify which columns to have characters matching the rm argument removed.

Value

A data frame containing the selected parts of characters removed.

Examples

# creating data set
Sites <- c("One.jpg", "Two.jpg", "Three.jpg", "Four.jpg", "Five.jpg")
Dominant_Coral <- c("Acropora.sp", "Leptastrea.spp", "Acropora.sp",
    "Acropora.sp", "Acropora.sp")
Dominant_Cover <- c(0.1, 0.4, 0.9, 0.2, 0.5)
Largest_Coral <- c("Acropora.sp", "Acropora.sp", "Psammocora.sp",
    "Acropora.sp","Gardineroseris.spp")

coral_cover <- data.frame(Sites, Dominant_Coral, Dominant_Cover, Largest_Coral)

# removing a character from select columns
coral_cover_nospp <- rm_chr(coral_cover, c(".spp"), full_selection = FALSE,
    cols = c("Largest_Coral", "Dominant_Coral"))

# removing multiple characters from all columns
coral_cover_clean <- rm_chr(coral_cover, c(".jpg", ".spp", ".sp"))