Generate abbreviated strings

Generate abbreviated strings, allowing for both a customized abbreviation (e.g., specific to country names) and a generic abbreviation.

create_abbreviated_label(x,
  abbrv.generic = function(x) abbreviate(gsub("[^[:alnum:] ]","",x)),
  abbrv.custom = NULL)

Arguments

x	A factor or character vector to be abbreviated.
abbrv.generic	Function accepting a single argument that returns a character vector containing abbreviations for the character strings in its first (and only) argument. The default calls the abbreviate function after first removing all non-alphanumeric characters.
abbrv.custom	Takes the same form as the abbrv.genetic function, but can also return NA for any character strings that are unrecognized.

Value

create_abbreviated_label returns either a character vector with abbreviated strings, or a factor in which the levels are abbreviated.

Details

create_abbreviated_label first applies the custom abbreviation, then applies the generic abbreviation to any entries that are unrecognized by the custom abbreviation (as indicated by NA).

See also

abbreviate

Examples

  # Define custom abbreviations for some Canadian provinces and
  # territories.
  canada.post.abbrv <- function (x)
    unlist(list(Quebec  = "QC",Ontario = "ON",Manitoba = "MB",
                Alberta = "AB",Saskatchewan = "SK",Yukon = "YT"))[x]

  # Function create_abbreviated_label can be applied to a factor or a
  # character vector.
  x <- c("Quebec","Alberta","Ontario","Alberta","Yukon")
  create_abbreviated_label(x,abbrv.custom = canada.post.abbrv)
#>  Quebec Alberta Ontario Alberta   Yukon 
#>    "QC"    "AB"    "ON"    "AB"    "YT" 
  create_abbreviated_label(factor(x),abbrv.custom = canada.post.abbrv)
#> [1] QC AB ON AB YT
#> Levels: AB ON QC YT