Count or Identify Matches of a Pattern in a Vector

This function counts the number of elements in a vector that contain a given pattern, or returns a logical vector indicating which elements match the pattern.

Usage

count_matching_elements(vector, pattern, return = "count")

Arguments

vector

A character vector to be searched.

pattern

The pattern to match (regular expression).

return

A string specifying the return type: "count" for number of matches, or "logi" for a logical vector.

Value

An integer representing the number of matches if return is "count", or a logical vector indicating which elements match the pattern if return is "logi".

Examples

vec <- c("abc", "def", "xyz", "abcd")
count_matching_elements(vec, "abc", return = "count")  # Returns 2
#> [1] 2
count_matching_elements(vec, "abc", return = "logi")   # Returns c(TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, TRUE)
#> [1]  TRUE FALSE FALSE  TRUE