NEWS.md

stringr 1.3.1

• str_replace_all() with a named vector now respects modifier functions (#207)

• str_trunc() is once again vectorised correctly (#203, @austin3dickey).

• str_view() handles NA values more gracefully (#217). I've also tweaked the sizing policy so hopefully it should work better in notebooks, while preserving the existing behaviour in knit documents (#232).

stringr 1.3.0

API changes

• During package build, you may see Error : object ‘ignore.case’ is not exported by 'namespace:stringr'. This is because the long deprecated str_join(), ignore.case() and perl() have now been removed.

New features

• str_glue() and str_glue_data() provide convenient wrappers around glue and glue_data() from the glue package (#157).

• str_flatten() is a wrapper around stri_flatten() and clearly conveys flattening a character vector into a single string (#186).

• str_remove() and str_remove_all() functions. These wrap str_replace() and str_replace_all() to remove patterns from strings. (@Shians, #178)

• str_squish() removes spaces from both the left and right side of strings, and also converts multiple space (or space-like characters) to a single space within strings (@stephlocke, #197).

• str_sub() gains omit_na argument for ignoring NA. Accordingly, str_replace() now ignores NAs and keeps the original strings. (@yutannihilation, #164)

Bug fixes and minor improvements

• str_trunc() now preserves NAs (@ClaytonJY, #162)

• str_trunc() now throws an error when width is shorter than ellipsis (@ClaytonJY, #163).

• Long deprecated str_join(), ignore.case() and perl() have now been removed.

stringr 1.2.0

API changes

• str_match_all() now returns NA if an optional group doesn't match (previously it returned ""). This is more consistent with str_match() and other match failures (#134).

New features

• In str_replace(), replacement can now be a function that is called once for each match and whose return value is used to replace the match.

• New str_which() mimics grep() (#129).

• A new vignette (vignette("regular-expressions")) describes the details of the regular expressions supported by stringr. The main vignette (vignette("stringr")) has been updated to give a high-level overview of the package.

Minor improvements and bug fixes

• str_order() and str_sort() gain explicit numeric argument for sorting mixed numbers and strings.

• str_replace_all() now throws an error if replacement is not a character vector. If replacement is NA_character_ it replaces the complete string with replaces with NA (#124).

• All functions that take a locale (e.g. str_to_lower() and str_sort()) default to "en" (English) to ensure that the default is consistent across platforms.

stringr 1.1.0

• Add sample datasets: fruit, words and sentences.

• fixed(), regex(), and coll() now throw an error if you use them with anything other than a plain string (#60). I've clarified that the replacement for perl() is regex() not regexp() (#61). boundary() has improved defaults when splitting on non-word boundaries (#58, @lmullen).

• str_detect() now can detect boundaries (by checking for a str_count() > 0) (#120). str_subset() works similarly.

• str_extract() and str_extract_all() now work with boundary(). This is particularly useful if you want to extract logical constructs like words or sentences. str_extract_all() respects the simplify argument when used with fixed() matches.

• str_subset() now respects custom options for fixed() patterns (#79, @gagolews).

• str_replace() and str_replace_all() now behave correctly when a replacement string contains $s, \\\\1, etc. (#83, #99).

• str_split() gains a simplify argument to match str_extract_all() etc.

• str_view() and str_view_all() create HTML widgets that display regular expression matches (#96).

• word() returns NA for indexes greater than number of words (#112).

stringr 1.0.0

• stringr is now powered by stringi instead of base R regular expressions. This improves unicode and support, and makes most operations considerably faster. If you find stringr inadequate for your string processing needs, I highly recommend looking at stringi in more detail.

• stringr gains a vignette, currently a straight forward update of the article that appeared in the R Journal.

• str_c() now returns a zero length vector if any of its inputs are zero length vectors. This is consistent with all other functions, and standard R recycling rules. Similarly, using str_c("x", NA) now yields NA. If you want "xNA", use str_replace_na() on the inputs.

• str_replace_all() gains a convenient syntax for applying multiple pairs of pattern and replacement to the same vector:

  input <- c("abc", "def")
  str_replace_all(input, c("[ad]" = "!", "[cf]" = "?"))

• str_match() now returns NA if an optional group doesn't match (previously it returned ""). This is more consistent with str_extract() and other match failures.

• New str_subset() keeps values that match a pattern. It's a convenient wrapper for x[str_detect(x)] (#21, @jiho).

• New str_order() and str_sort() allow you to sort and order strings in a specified locale.

• New str_conv() to convert strings from specified encoding to UTF-8.

• New modifier boundary() allows you to count, locate and split by character, word, line and sentence boundaries.

• The documentation got a lot of love, and very similar functions (e.g. first and all variants) are now documented together. This should hopefully make it easier to locate the function you need.

• ignore.case(x) has been deprecated in favour of fixed|regex|coll(x, ignore.case = TRUE), perl(x) has been deprecated in favour of regex(x).

• str_join() is deprecated, please use str_c() instead.

stringr 0.6.2

• fixed path in str_wrap example so works for more R installations.

• remove dependency on plyr

stringr 0.6.1

• Zero input to str_split_fixed returns 0 row matrix with n columns

• Export str_join

stringr 0.6

• new modifier perl that switches to Perl regular expressions

• str_match now uses new base function regmatches to extract matches - this should hopefully be faster than my previous pure R algorithm

stringr 0.5

• new str_wrap function which gives strwrap output in a more convenient format

• new word function extract words from a string given user defined separator (thanks to suggestion by David Cooper)

• str_locate now returns consistent type when matching empty string (thanks to Stavros Macrakis)

• new str_count counts number of matches in a string.

• str_pad and str_trim receive performance tweaks - for large vectors this should give at least a two order of magnitude speed up

• str_length returns NA for invalid multibyte strings

• fix small bug in internal recyclable function

stringr 0.4

• all functions now vectorised with respect to string, pattern (and where appropriate) replacement parameters
• fixed() function now tells stringr functions to use fixed matching, rather than escaping the regular expression. Should improve performance for large vectors.
• new ignore.case() modifier tells stringr functions to ignore case of pattern.
• str_replace renamed to str_replace_all and new str_replace function added. This makes str_replace consistent with all functions.
• new str_sub<- function (analogous to substring<-) for substring replacement
• str_sub now understands negative positions as a position from the end of the string. -1 replaces Inf as indicator for string end.
• str_pad side argument can be left, right, or both (instead of center)
• str_trim gains side argument to better match str_pad
• stringr now has a namespace and imports plyr (rather than requiring it)

stringr 0.3

• fixed() now also escapes |
• str_join() renamed to str_c()
• all functions more carefully check input and return informative error messages if not as expected.
• add invert_match() function to convert a matrix of location of matches to locations of non-matches
• add fixed() function to allow matching of fixed strings.

stringr 0.2

• str_length now returns correct results when used with factors
• str_sub now correctly replaces Inf in end argument with length of string
• new function str_split_fixed returns fixed number of splits in a character matrix
• str_split no longer uses strsplit to preserve trailing breaks