stri_startsendswith: Determine if the Start or End of a String Matches a Pattern#

Description#

These functions check if a string starts or ends with a match to a given pattern. Also, it is possible to check if there is a match at a specific position.

Usage#

stri_startswith(str, ..., fixed, coll, charclass)

stri_endswith(str, ..., fixed, coll, charclass)

stri_startswith_fixed(
  str,
  pattern,
  from = 1L,
  negate = FALSE,
  ...,
  opts_fixed = NULL
)

stri_endswith_fixed(
  str,
  pattern,
  to = -1L,
  negate = FALSE,
  ...,
  opts_fixed = NULL
)

stri_startswith_charclass(str, pattern, from = 1L, negate = FALSE)

stri_endswith_charclass(str, pattern, to = -1L, negate = FALSE)

stri_startswith_coll(
  str,
  pattern,
  from = 1L,
  negate = FALSE,
  ...,
  opts_collator = NULL
)

stri_endswith_coll(
  str,
  pattern,
  to = -1L,
  negate = FALSE,
  ...,
  opts_collator = NULL
)

Arguments#

str

character vector

...

supplementary arguments passed to the underlying functions, including additional settings for opts_collator, opts_fixed, and so on.

pattern, fixed, coll, charclass

character vector defining search patterns; for more details refer to stringi-search

from

integer vector

negate

single logical value; whether a no-match to a pattern is rather of interest

to

integer vector

opts_collator, opts_fixed

a named list used to tune up the search engine’s settings; see stri_opts_collator and stri_opts_fixed, respectively; NULL for the defaults

Details#

Vectorized over str, pattern, and from or to (with recycling of the elements in the shorter vector if necessary).

If pattern is empty, then the result is NA and a warning is generated.

Argument start controls the start position in str where there is a match to a pattern. to gives the end position.

Indexes given by from or to are of course 1-based, i.e., an index 1 denotes the first character in a string. This gives a typical R look-and-feel.

For negative indexes in from or to, counting starts at the end of the string. For instance, index -1 denotes the last code point in the string.

If you wish to test for a pattern match at an arbitrary position in str, use stri_detect.

stri_startswith and stri_endswith are convenience functions. They call either stri_*_fixed, stri_*_coll, or stri_*_charclass, depending on the argument used. Relying on these underlying functions directly will make your code run slightly faster.

Note that testing for a pattern match at the start or end of a string has not been implemented separately for regex patterns. For that you may use the ‘^’ and ‘$’ meta-characters, see stringi-search-regex.

Value#

Each function returns a logical vector.

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_detect: about_search, stri_detect()

Examples#

stri_startswith_charclass(' trim me! ', '\\p{WSpace}')
## [1] TRUE
stri_startswith_fixed(c('a1', 'a2', 'b3', 'a4', 'c5'), 'a')
## [1]  TRUE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE
stri_detect_regex(c('a1', 'a2', 'b3', 'a4', 'c5'), '^a')
## [1]  TRUE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE
stri_startswith_fixed('ababa', 'ba')
## [1] FALSE
stri_startswith_fixed('ababa', 'ba', from=2)
## [1] TRUE
stri_startswith_coll(c('a1', 'A2', 'b3', 'A4', 'C5'), 'a', strength=1)
## [1]  TRUE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE
pat <- stri_paste('\u0635\u0644\u0649 \u0627\u0644\u0644\u0647 ',
                  '\u0639\u0644\u064a\u0647 \u0648\u0633\u0644\u0645XYZ')
stri_endswith_coll('\ufdfa\ufdfa\ufdfaXYZ', pat, strength=1)
## [1] TRUE