Return true if string contains "|"

Question

to check if a string contains a given element we can do

strings <- c("4|x|4", "4x4", "1|x|1")
element <- "4"
grepl(element, strings)
#[1]  TRUE  TRUE FALSE

but if the element is a | this no longer works.

 grepl("|", strings)
 #[1] TRUE TRUE TRUE

How can we return TRUE,FALSE,TRUE?

Use `grep("|", strings, fixed = TRUE)` – akrun Jan 22 '19 at 13:47 — akrun, Jan 22 '19 at 13:47

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 22 '19 at 13:48

1

The | is a metacharacter meaning OR or either. To evaluate the literal string value, either escape (\\) or place it inside brackets ([]) or use the fixed = TRUE argument

grepl("|", strings, fixed = TRUE)
#[1]  TRUE FALSE  TRUE

answered Jan 22 '19 at 13:48

akrun

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Return true if string contains "|"

1 Answers1