R: How to replace several different values in a more efficient way?-CodePudding

Given this dataset, I would like to know if there is a way to solve this in a more efficient and less repetitive way.

The dataset is made up of a series of courses where some are repeated and written differently (all in capital letters or with extra spaces, etc.)

To solve this problem I use the following method:

# Load dataset
courses <- read.csv('courses.csv')

courses$x[courses$x == 'KOE'] <- 'Koe'
courses$x[courses$x == 'koe'] <- 'Koe'
courses$x[courses$x == 'BENL'] <- 'Benl'
courses$x[courses$x == 'engin'] <- 'Engine'
courses$x[courses$x == 'Fiqh'] <- 'Fiqh Fatwa'
courses$x[courses$x == 'Fiqh fatwa '] <- 'Fiqh Fatwa'
courses$x[courses$x == 'Islamic education'] <- 'Islamic Education'
courses$x[courses$x == 'KIRKHS'] <- 'Kirkhs'
courses$x[courses$x == 'Laws'] <- 'Law'
courses$x[courses$x == 'Pendidikan islam'] <- 'Pendidikan Islam'
courses$x[courses$x == 'Pendidikan Islam '] <- 'Pendidikan Islam'
courses$x[courses$x == 'psychology'] <- 'Psychology'

What other more efficient and less repetitive way exists to solve this problem!?

Thank you very much for reading my question, any advice is welcome!

CodePudding user response：

How about

apply(courses, 2, (function(x) paste(toupper(substr(x, 1, 1)), tolower(substr(x, 2, nchar(x))), sep="")))

The anonymous function converts the first char to upper and the rest to lower. apply, applies to all elements

Something like

courses$y = sapply(courses$x, (function(x) paste(toupper(substr(x, 1, 1)), tolower(substr(x, 2, nchar(x))), sep="")))

would be nice too if you have other columns.

If you can install packages it's always better to use package, stringr has a lot function including str_to_title

str_to_title(courses$x)

will do what you seem to want.

CodePudding user response：

You could do:

courses$x <- tools::toTitleCase(tolower(courses$x))

courses
                   x
1                Koe
2                Koe
3               Benl
4              Engin
5               Fiqh
6         Fiqh Fatwa
7  Islamic Education
8             Kirkhs
9               Laws
10  Pendidikan Islam
11  Pendidikan Islam
12        Psychology

Data:

courses <- data.frame(x = c("KOE", "koe", "BENL", "engin", "Fiqh", "Fiqh fatwa",
                             "Islamic education", "KIRKHS", "Laws", "Pendidikan islam", 
                             "Pendidikan Islam", "psychology"))