[R] String manipulations

[Marc Schwartz]

On Jul 24, 2009, at 10:35 AM, Peng Yu wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am looking for a reference page that gives me a complete list of R
> string manipulation operations. At this moment, I am looking for
> something like basename and dirname. The following webpage doesn't
> give me any information. Can somebody point me a better resource?
>
> http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php?id=rdoc:base:basename
>
> Regards,
> Peng


I am not sure that you will find a single consolidated list that  
contains such functions for 'base R', much less for one that includes  
even popular CRAN packages.

Two suggestions:

1. Use help.search() with a keyword such as 'string' or 'character'.  
This will bring up a list of functions in your current R installation  
that contain that keyword and related/fuzzy matches.  In this  
particular case, it will bring up matches that are relevant and others  
that may not be.

2. Use RSiteSearch() with a keyword will search online documents and  
list archives, again using a keyword based search. This expands the  
scope of the search to include references that may not be part of your  
current installation, potentially pointing you to solutions posted by  
others over the years as well as relevant CRAN packages and functions.

In your specific quest, using help.search("basename") will bring you  
to the R function of the same name and on the same help page is  
dirname(). More general references will be found using 'file' as the  
keyword for file related functions.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz