clinpubr (version 1.3.0)

merge_by_substring: Merge Data Frame by String Key Matching

Description

This function merges two data frames based on string key matching. It searches for keys from key_df[[key_col]] in data[[search_col]] and adds corresponding columns from key_df to data.

Usage

merge_by_substring(data, key_df, search_col, key_col, value_cols)

Value

A data frame with all columns from data plus matched columns from key_df. Unmatched rows will have NA values in the added columns.

Arguments

data

The primary data frame to be enhanced with additional columns

key_df

A data frame containing string keys and their corresponding values

search_col

Column name in data to search for keys (default: "name")

key_col

Column name in key_df containing keys to match (default: "key")

value_cols

Column name(s) in key_df to add to data (default: "value") Can be a single column name or a character vector of column names

Examples

# Basic usage
main_data <- data.frame(
  name = c("AB", "B,C", "A..", "ACD"),
  value = c(1, 2, 3, 4),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
key_lookup <- data.frame(
  key = c("A", "B", "C", "ACD", "AB"),
  category = c("cat1", "cat2", "cat3", "cat4", "cat1"),
  code = c("001", "002", "003", "004", "001"),
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)
result <- merge_by_substring(main_data, key_lookup,
  search_col = "name",
  key_col = "key", value_cols = c("category", "code")
)
print(result)