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Replace whitespace with underscores

Source: R/general_replace_space.R
replace_space.Rd

Replaces all whitespace characters (spaces, tabs, etc.) with underscores in a character vector. This is a wrapper around stringr::str_replace_all() for formatting strings in contexts where whitespace is not allowed (e.g., file names, variable names). Optionally, a custom replacement character can be specified.

Usage

replace_space(x, replacement = "_")

Arguments

x

A character vector. Each element is processed to replace whitespace with underscores. Missing values (NA) are preserved.

replacement

A single character string to replace whitespace. Defaults to "_" (underscore). Must be of length 1.

Value

A character vector of the same length as x, with all whitespace characters replaced by replacement. Missing values (NA) are returned unchanged.

See also

stringr::str_replace_all() for the underlying function, gsub() for base R alternative.

Examples

# Basic usage
replace_space("Genus species")
#> [1] "Genus_species"

# Vector input
replace_space(c("Genus species1", "Genus species2"))
#> [1] "Genus_species1" "Genus_species2"
replace_space(c("Genus species 1", "Genus species 2"))
#> [1] "Genus_species_1" "Genus_species_2"

# Multiple whitespace types
replace_space("Genus   species\tname")
#> [1] "Genus_species_name"

# Custom replacement
replace_space("Genus species", replacement = "-")
#> [1] "Genus-species"

# Handle missing values
replace_space(c("Genus species 1", NA, "Genus species 2"))
#> [1] "Genus_species_1" NA                "Genus_species_2"

# Empty strings
replace_space("")
#> [1] ""