In-string variable/symbol substitution: What formats/syntax is out there?
On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 4:44 PM, Henrik Bengtsson <hb at biostat.ucsf.edu> wrote:
Hi,
I'm try to collect a list of methods/packages available in R for doing
in-string variable/symbol substitution, e.g. someFcn("pi=${pi}"),
anotherFcn("pi=@pi@") and so on becomes "pi=3.141593". I am aware of
the following:
** gsubfn() in the 'gsubfn' package, e.g.
gsubfn( , , "pi = $pi, 2pi = `2*pi`")
[1] "pi = 3.14159265358979, 2pi = 6.28318530717959" ** gstring() in the 'R.utils' package, e.g.
gstring("pi = ${pi}, 2pi = ${`2*pi`}")
[1] "pi = 3.14159265358979, 2pi = 6.28318530717959" I'm sure there are other approaches - do you know of any in R? They don't have to support in-line calculations such as in the first two examples, but if they do, it's a bonus. I'm looking for simpler functions and not full blown literate programming methods (e.g. Sweave, noweb, knitr, brew, RSP, ...). It should also be *in-string* substitution out of the box, so sub(), sprintf() and friends does not count. Thanks Henrik PS. The following is on the borderline because it does not do automatic variable look up, but since others may bring it up and/or know of a neater approach, I mention it too: ** copySubstitute() in the 'Biobase' package (with some efforts), e.g.
bbsubst <- function(fmt, ...) {
args <- lapply(list(...), FUN=as.character)
in <- textConnection(fmt)
out <- textConnection("res", open="w")
on.exit({ close(in); close(out) })
copySubstitute(in, out, symbolValues=args)
res
}
bbsubst("pi = @pi@", pi=pi)
[1] "pi = 3.14159265358979"
Note that the gsubfn example above is the default only but by
specifying the pattern argument (first arg) it can be changed. e.g.
library(gsubfn)
pat <- "[$]([[:alpha:]][[:alnum:].]*)|[$][{]([^}]*)[}]"
gsubfn(pat,, "pi=$pi 2pi=${2*pi}")
pat2 <- "@([^@]*)@"
gsubfn(pat2,, "pi=@pi@ 2pi=@2*pi@")
pat3 <- "%([^%]*)%"
gsubfn(pat3,, "pi=%pi% 2pi=%2*pi%")
pat4 <- "{{(.*?)}}"
gsubfn(pat4,, "pi={{pi}} 2pi={{2*pi}}")
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