Tools for Working With Empty String

• remove_empty() remove rows/columns that contain empty strings.

• replace_empty() replaces empty strings.

Usage

remove_empty(x, ...)

replace_empty(x, ...)

# S4 method for ANY
remove_empty(x, margin = 1, all = FALSE, na.rm = FALSE)

# S4 method for matrix
replace_empty(x, value)

# S4 method for data.frame
replace_empty(x, value)

Arguments

x

An R object (should be a matrix or a data.frame).

...

Currently not used.

margin

A length-one numeric vector giving the subscripts which the function will be applied over (1 indicates rows, 2 indicates columns).

all

A logical scalar. If TRUE, only the rows/columns whose values all meet the condition defined by f are considered. If FALSE (the default), only rows/columns where at least one value validates the condition defined by f are considered.

na.rm

A logical scalar: should NA values be stripped before the computation proceeds?

value

A possible replacement value.

See also

Other data cleaning tools: compact(), count(), detect(), discard(), infinite, keep(), missing, remove_constant(), zero

Author

N. Frerebeau

Examples

## Create a data matrix
X <- matrix(sample(LETTERS, 25, TRUE), nrow = 5, ncol = 5)

## Add empty string
k <- sample(1:25, 3, FALSE)
X[k] <- ""
X
#>      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
#> [1,] "G"  "W"  ""   ""   "U" 
#> [2,] "Y"  "X"  "U"  "V"  "N" 
#> [3,] "X"  "X"  "I"  "E"  "D" 
#> [4,] "T"  "Y"  "V"  "O"  "U" 
#> [5,] "B"  ""   "A"  "Z"  "D" 

## Remove rows with empty strings
remove_empty(X, margin = 1)
#>      [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5]
#> [1,] "Y"  "X"  "U"  "V"  "N" 
#> [2,] "X"  "X"  "I"  "E"  "D" 
#> [3,] "T"  "Y"  "V"  "O"  "U" 

## Replace empty strings
replace_empty(X, value = "XXX")
#>      [,1] [,2]  [,3]  [,4]  [,5]
#> [1,] "G"  "W"   "XXX" "XXX" "U" 
#> [2,] "Y"  "X"   "U"   "V"   "N" 
#> [3,] "X"  "X"   "I"   "E"   "D" 
#> [4,] "T"  "Y"   "V"   "O"   "U" 
#> [5,] "B"  "XXX" "A"   "Z"   "D"