stringi 0.4-1 released – fast, portable, consistent character string processing

A new release of the stringi package is available on CRAN (please wait a few days for Windows and OS X binary builds).

# install.packages("stringi") or update.packages()
library("stringi")

Here’s a list of changes in version 0.4-1. In the current release, we particularly focused on making the package’s interface more consistent with that of the well-known stringr package. For a general overview of stringi’s facilities and base R string processing issues, see e.g. here.

• (IMPORTANT CHANGE) n_max argument in stri_split_*() has been renamed n.

• (IMPORTANT CHANGE) simplify=FALSE in stri_extract_all_*() and stri_split_*() now calls stri_list2matrix() with fill="". fill=NA_character_ may be obtained by using simplify=NA.

• (IMPORTANT CHANGE, NEW FUNCTIONS) #120: stri_extract_words has been renamed stri_extract_all_words and stri_locate_boundaries – stri_locate_all_boundaries as well as stri_locate_words – stri_locate_all_words. New functions are now available: stri_locate_first_boundaries, stri_locate_last_boundaries, stri_locate_first_words, stri_locate_last_words, stri_extract_first_words, stri_extract_last_words.

# uses ICU's locale-dependent word break iterator
stri_extract_all_words("stringi: THE string processing package for R")
## [[1]]
## [1] "stringi"    "THE"        "string"     "processing" "package"   
## [6] "for"        "R"

• (IMPORTANT CHANGE) #111: opts_regex, opts_collator, opts_fixed, and opts_brkiter can now be supplied individually via .... In other words, you may now simply call e.g.

stri_detect_regex(c("stringi", "STRINGI"), "stringi", case_insensitive=TRUE)
## [1] TRUE TRUE

instead of:

stri_detect_regex(c("stringi", "STRINGI"), "stringi", opts_regex=stri_opts_regex(case_insensitive=TRUE))
## [1] TRUE TRUE

• (NEW FEATURE) #110: Fixed pattern search engine’s settings can now be supplied via opts_fixed argument in stri_*_fixed(), see stri_opts_fixed(). A simple (not suitable for natural language processing) yet very fast case_insensitive pattern matching can be performed now. stri_extract_*_fixed is again available.

• (NEW FEATURE) #23: stri_extract_all_fixed, stri_count, and stri_locate_all_fixed may now also look for overlapping pattern matches, see ?stri_opts_fixed.

stri_extract_all_fixed("abaBAaba", "ABA", case_insensitive=TRUE, overlap=TRUE)
## [[1]]
## [1] "aba" "aBA" "aba"

• (NEW FEATURE) #129: stri_match_*_regex gained a cg_missing argument.

• (NEW FEATURE) #117: stri_extract_all_*(), stri_locate_all_*(), stri_match_all_*() gained a new argument: omit_no_match. Setting it to TRUE makes these functions compatible with their stringr equivalents.

• (NEW FEATURE) #118: stri_wrap() gained indent, exdent, initial, and prefix arguments. Moreover Knuth’s dynamic word wrapping algorithm now assumes that the cost of printing the last line is zero, see #128.

cat(stri_wrap(stri_rand_lipsum(1), 40, 2.0), sep="n")
## Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, et et diam
## vitae est ut. At tristique, tincidunt
## taciti, ac egestas vestibulum magna.
## Volutpat nisl non sed ultricies nisl
## nibh magna. Nullam rhoncus ut phasellus
## sed. Congue enim libero congue massa
## eget. Ligula, quis est amet velit.
## Accumsan amet nunc ad. Porttitor,
## sed vestibulum diam vestibulum quis
## sed gravida ultrices. Per urna enim.
## Scelerisque interdum sed vestibulum
## rhoncus quis imperdiet pharetra. Sapien
## iaculis, lacinia ac cras ante, sed
## vitae inceptos dis tristique dignissim.
## Venenatis volutpat lectus sodales,
## hac feugiat molestie mollis. A, urna
## pellentesque ante himenaeos ante at
## potenti in.

• (NEW FEATURE) #122: stri_subset() gained an omit_na argument.

stri_subset_fixed(c("abc", NA, "def"), "a")
## [1] "abc" NA
stri_subset_fixed(c("abc", NA, "def"), "a", omit_na=TRUE)
## [1] "abc"

• (NEW FEATURE) stri_list2matrix() gained an n_min argument.

• (NEW FEATURE) #126: stri_split() now is also able to act just like stringr::str_split_fixed().

stri_split_regex(c("bab", "babab"), "a", n = 3, simplify=TRUE)
##      [,1] [,2] [,3]
## [1,] "b"  "b"  ""  
## [2,] "b"  "b"  "b"

• (NEW FEATURE) #119: stri_split_boundaries() now have n, tokens_only, and simplify arguments. Additionally, stri_extract_all_words() is now equipped with simplify arg.

• (NEW FEATURE) #116: stri_paste() gained a new argument: ignore_null. Setting it to TRUE makes this function more compatible with paste().

for (test in c(TRUE, FALSE))
   print(stri_paste("a", if (test) 1:9, ignore_null=TRUE))
## [1] "a1" "a2" "a3" "a4" "a5" "a6" "a7" "a8" "a9"
## [1] "a"

Enjoy! Any comments and suggestions are welcome.