stri_split_boundaries: Split a String at Text Boundaries

Description

This function locates text boundaries (like character, word, line, or sentence boundaries) and splits strings at the indicated positions.

Usage

stri_split_boundaries(
  str,
  n = -1L,
  tokens_only = FALSE,
  simplify = FALSE,
  ...,
  opts_brkiter = NULL
)

Arguments

str	character vector or an object coercible to
n	integer vector, maximal number of strings to return
tokens_only	single logical value; may affect the result if n is positive, see Details
simplify	single logical value; if TRUE or NA, then a character matrix is returned; otherwise (the default), a list of character vectors is given, see Value
...	additional settings for opts_brkiter
opts_brkiter	a named list with ICU BreakIterator’s settings, see stri_opts_brkiter; NULL for the default break iterator, i.e., line_break

Details

Vectorized over str and n.

If n is negative (the default), then all text pieces are extracted.

Otherwise, if tokens_only is FALSE (which is the default), then n-1 tokens are extracted (if possible) and the n-th string gives the (non-split) remainder (see Examples). On the other hand, if tokens_only is TRUE, then only full tokens (up to n pieces) are extracted.

For more information on text boundary analysis performed by ICU’s BreakIterator, see stringi-search-boundaries.

Value

If simplify=FALSE (the default), then the functions return a list of character vectors.

Otherwise, stri_list2matrix with byrow=TRUE and n_min=n arguments is called on the resulting object. In such a case, a character matrix with length(str) rows is returned. Note that stri_list2matrix’s fill argument is set to an empty string and NA, for simplify equal to TRUE and NA, respectively.

Author(s)

Marek Gagolewski and other contributors

See Also

The official online manual of stringi at https://stringi.gagolewski.com/

Gagolewski M., stringi: Fast and portable character string processing in R, Journal of Statistical Software 103(2), 2022, 1-59, doi:10.18637/jss.v103.i02

Other search_split: about_search, stri_split(), stri_split_lines()

Other locale_sensitive: %s<%(), about_locale, about_search_boundaries, about_search_coll, stri_compare(), stri_count_boundaries(), stri_duplicated(), stri_enc_detect2(), stri_extract_all_boundaries(), stri_locate_all_boundaries(), stri_opts_collator(), stri_order(), stri_rank(), stri_sort(), stri_sort_key(), stri_trans_tolower(), stri_unique(), stri_wrap()

Other text_boundaries: about_search, about_search_boundaries, stri_count_boundaries(), stri_extract_all_boundaries(), stri_locate_all_boundaries(), stri_opts_brkiter(), stri_split_lines(), stri_trans_tolower(), stri_wrap()

Examples

test <- 'The\u00a0above-mentioned    features are very useful. ' %s+%
   'Spam, spam, eggs, bacon, and spam. 123 456 789'
stri_split_boundaries(test, type='line')
## [[1]]
##  [1] "The above-"    "mentioned    " "features "     "are "         
##  [5] "very "         "useful. "      "Spam, "        "spam, "       
##  [9] "eggs, "        "bacon, "       "and "          "spam. "       
## [13] "123 "          "456 "          "789"
stri_split_boundaries(test, type='word')
## [[1]]
##  [1] "The"       " "         "above"     "-"         "mentioned" "    "     
##  [7] "features"  " "         "are"       " "         "very"      " "        
## [13] "useful"    "."         " "         "Spam"      ","         " "        
## [19] "spam"      ","         " "         "eggs"      ","         " "        
## [25] "bacon"     ","         " "         "and"       " "         "spam"     
## [31] "."         " "         "123"       " "         "456"       " "        
## [37] "789"
stri_split_boundaries(test, type='word', skip_word_none=TRUE)
## [[1]]
##  [1] "The"       "above"     "mentioned" "features"  "are"       "very"     
##  [7] "useful"    "Spam"      "spam"      "eggs"      "bacon"     "and"      
## [13] "spam"      "123"       "456"       "789"
stri_split_boundaries(test, type='word', skip_word_none=TRUE, skip_word_letter=TRUE)
## [[1]]
## [1] "123" "456" "789"
stri_split_boundaries(test, type='word', skip_word_none=TRUE, skip_word_number=TRUE)
## [[1]]
##  [1] "The"       "above"     "mentioned" "features"  "are"       "very"     
##  [7] "useful"    "Spam"      "spam"      "eggs"      "bacon"     "and"      
## [13] "spam"
stri_split_boundaries(test, type='sentence')
## [[1]]
## [1] "The above-mentioned    features are very useful. "
## [2] "Spam, spam, eggs, bacon, and spam. "              
## [3] "123 456 789"
stri_split_boundaries(test, type='sentence', skip_sentence_sep=TRUE)
## [[1]]
## [1] "The above-mentioned    features are very useful. "
## [2] "Spam, spam, eggs, bacon, and spam. "
stri_split_boundaries(test, type='character')
## [[1]]
##  [1] "T" "h" "e" " " "a" "b" "o" "v" "e" "-" "m" "e" "n" "t" "i" "o" "n" "e" "d"
## [20] " " " " " " " " "f" "e" "a" "t" "u" "r" "e" "s" " " "a" "r" "e" " " "v" "e"
## [39] "r" "y" " " "u" "s" "e" "f" "u" "l" "." " " "S" "p" "a" "m" "," " " "s" "p"
## [58] "a" "m" "," " " "e" "g" "g" "s" "," " " "b" "a" "c" "o" "n" "," " " "a" "n"
## [77] "d" " " "s" "p" "a" "m" "." " " "1" "2" "3" " " "4" "5" "6" " " "7" "8" "9"
# a filtered break iterator with the new ICU:
stri_split_boundaries('Mr. Jones and Mrs. Brown are very happy.
So am I, Prof. Smith.', type='sentence', locale='en_US@ss=standard') # ICU >= 56 only
## [[1]]
## [1] "Mr. Jones and Mrs. Brown are very happy.\n"
## [2] "So am I, Prof. Smith."