R: Check if String Contains Multiple Substrings

You can use the following methods in R to check if a string contains multiple substrings:

Method 1: Check if String Contains One of Several Substrings

df$contains_any <- apply(sapply(find_strings, grepl, df$team), 1, any)

This particular syntax checks if each string in the team column contains any of the strings specified in the vector of strings called find_strings.

Method 2: Check if String Contains Several Substrings

df$contains_any <- apply(sapply(find_strings, grepl, df$team), 1, all) 

This particular syntax checks if each string in the team column contains all of the strings specified in the vector of strings called find_strings.

The following examples show how to use each method in practice with the following data frame in R:

#create data frame
df = data.frame(team=c('Good East Team', 'Good West Team', 'Great East Team',
                       'Great West Team', 'Bad East Team', 'Bad West Team'),
                points=c(93, 99, 105, 110, 85, 88))

#view data frame
df

             team points
1  Good East Team     93
2  Good West Team     99
3 Great East Team    105
4 Great West Team    110
5   Bad East Team     85
6   Bad West Team     88

Example 1: Check if String Contains One of Several Substrings

We can use the following syntax to check if each string in the team column contains either the substring “Good” or “East”:

#define substrings to look for
find_strings <- c('Good', 'East')

#check if each string in team column contains either substring
df$good_or_east <- apply(sapply(find_strings , grepl, df$team), 1, any)

#view updated data frame
df

             team points good_or_east
1  Good East Team     93         TRUE
2  Good West Team     99         TRUE
3 Great East Team    105         TRUE
4 Great West Team    110        FALSE
5   Bad East Team     85         TRUE
6   Bad West Team     88        FALSE

The new good_or_east column returns the following values:

• TRUE if team contains “Good” or “East”
• FALSE if team contains neither “Good” nor “East”

Example 2: Check if String Contains Several Substrings

We can use the following syntax to check if each string in the team column contains the substring “Good” and “East”:

#define substrings to look for
find_strings <- c('Good', 'East')

#check if each string in team column contains either substring
df$good_and_east <- apply(sapply(find_strings , grepl, df$team), 1, all)

#view updated data frame
df

             team points good_and_east
1  Good East Team     93          TRUE
2  Good West Team     99         FALSE
3 Great East Team    105         FALSE
4 Great West Team    110         FALSE
5   Bad East Team     85         FALSE
6   Bad West Team     88         FALSE

The new good_and_east column returns the following values:

• TRUE if team contains “Good” and “East”
• FALSE if team doesn’t contain “Good” and “East”

Notice that only one TRUE value is returned since there is only one team name that contains the substring “Good” and the substring “East.”

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in R:

R: How to Check if Character is in String
R: How to Remove Spaces from Strings
R: How to Extract String Between Specific Characters