string = c("apple", "apples", "applez")
grep("apple", string)
This would give me the index for all three elements in string
. But I want an exact match on the word "apple" (i.e I just want grep()
to return index 1).
Use word boundary \b
which matches a between a word and non-word character,
string = c("apple", "apples", "applez")
grep("\\bapple\\b", string)
[1] 1
OR
Use anchors. ^
Asserts that we are at the start. $
Asserts that we are at the end.
grep("^apple$", string)
[1] 1
You could store the regex inside a variable and then use it like below.
pat <- "\\bapple\\b"
grep(pat, string)
[1] 1
pat <- "^apple$"
grep(pat, string)
[1] 1
Update:
paste("^",pat,"$", sep="")
[1] "^apple$"
string
[1] "apple" "apple:s" "applez"
pat
[1] "apple"
grep(paste("^",pat,"$", sep=""), string)
[1] 1