arg_match: Match an argument to a character vector

Description

This is equivalent to base::match.arg() with a few differences:

Partial matches trigger an error.
Error messages are a bit more informative and obey the tidyverse standards.

arg_match() derives the possible values from the caller function.

arg_match0() is a bare-bones version if performance is at a premium. It requires a string as arg and explicit character values. For convenience, arg may also be a character vector containing every element of values, possibly permuted. In this case, the first element of arg is used.

Usage

arg_match(
  arg,
  values = NULL,
  ...,
  multiple = FALSE,
  error_arg = caller_arg(arg),
  error_call = caller_env()
)
arg_match0(arg, values, arg_nm = caller_arg(arg), error_call = caller_env())

Value

The string supplied to arg.

Arguments

arg: A symbol referring to an argument accepting strings.
values: A character vector of possible values that arg can take.
...: These dots are for future extensions and must be empty.
multiple: Whether arg may contain zero or several values.
error_arg: An argument name as a string. This argument will be mentioned in error messages as the input that is at the origin of a problem.
error_call: The execution environment of a currently running function, e.g. caller_env(). The function will be mentioned in error messages as the source of the error. See the call argument of abort() for more information.
arg_nm: Same as error_arg.

Examples

Run this code

fn <- function(x = c("foo", "bar")) arg_match(x)
fn("bar")

# Throws an informative error for mismatches:
try(fn("b"))
try(fn("baz"))

# Use the bare-bones version with explicit values for speed:
arg_match0("bar", c("foo", "bar", "baz"))

# For convenience:
fn1 <- function(x = c("bar", "baz", "foo")) fn3(x)
fn2 <- function(x = c("baz", "bar", "foo")) fn3(x)
fn3 <- function(x) arg_match0(x, c("foo", "bar", "baz"))
fn1()
fn2("bar")
try(fn3("zoo"))

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