# Using clean_strings

    library(fedmatch)

# Using clean_strings

`clean_strings` is the way to prepare strings for name matching, either within `tier_match` (see the `Using-tier-match` vignette). There are several useful options that allow for many different options.

Here’s the example string we’ll be using:

    name_vec <- corp_data1[, Company]
    name_vec
    #>  [1] "Walmart"            "Bershire Hataway"   "Apple"
    #>  [4] "Exxon Mobile"       "McKesson "          "UnitedHealth Group"
    #>  [7] "CVS Health"         "General Motors"     "AT&T"
    #> [10] "Ford Motor Company"

First, we can use the basic string cleaning defaults:

    clean_strings(name_vec)
    #>  [1] "walmart"            "bershire hataway"   "apple"
    #>  [4] "exxon mobile"       "mckesson"           "unitedhealth group"
    #>  [7] "cvs health"         "general motors"     "atandt"
    #> [10] "ford motor company"

Without any additional arguments, `clean_strings` does the following:

- Make everything lowercase
- Replace the special characters &, @, %, $ with their word equivalents
- Remove all other special characters (e.g. commas, periods)
- Convert tabs to spaces
- Remove extra spaces

Then, we have a few different options we can use.

## sp_char_words

`sp_char_words` is a data.frame with 2 columns: the first column is symbols to replace, and the second is their replacement. `fedmatch` as a built-in set of symbols:

    print(sp_char_words)
    #>    character replacement
    #> 1:       \\&         and
    #> 2:       \\$      dollar
    #> 3:       \\%     percent
    #> 4:       \\@          at

But, you can use any data.frame you’d like, to make whatever replacements you’d like:

    new_sp_char <- data.table::data.table(character = c("o"), replacement = c("apple"))
    clean_strings(name_vec, sp_char_words = new_sp_char)
    #>  [1] "walmart"                            "bershire hataway"
    #>  [3] "apple"                              "exxapplen mapplebile"
    #>  [5] "mckessapplen"                       "unitedhealth grappleup"
    #>  [7] "cvs health"                         "general mappletapplers"
    #>  [9] "at t"                               "fapplerd mappletappler capplempany"

## common_words

`common_words` is similar, but it respects word boundaries (so you don’t replace every usage of ‘Corp’ with ‘Corporation’, for example.) `fedmatch` has a built-in set of 54 words and their replacements:

    print(corporate_words[1:5])
    #>     abbr     long.names
    #> 1: accep     acceptance
    #> 2:  amer        america
    #> 3: assoc     associates
    #> 4:    cl company listed
    #> 5: cmnty      community

But, you can use whatever words you’d like:

    clean_strings(name_vec, common_words = data.table::data.table(word = c("general", "almart"),
                                                                  replacement = c("bananas", "oranges")))
    #>  [1] "walmart"            "bershire hataway"   "apple"
    #>  [4] "exxon mobile"       "mckesson"           "unitedhealth group"
    #>  [7] "cvs health"         "bananas motors"     "atandt"
    #> [10] "ford motor company"

(bananas motors sounds like a lovely place to work). Note that the ‘almart’ in ‘walmart’ didn’t get replaced, because common_words respects word boundaries.,

You can also use a related function, `word_frequency`, to look for the most common strings in your data:

    word_frequency(sample(c("hi", "Hello", "bye    "), 1e4, replace = TRUE))
    #>     Word Count
    #> 1: hello  3376
    #> 2:   bye  3323
    #> 3:    hi  3301

## Remove characters and words

remove_words and remove_char are booleans that let you simply remove the words in ‘common_words’ or specify a set of characters to remove rather than replacing them.

    clean_strings(name_vec, sp_char_words = new_sp_char, remove_char = c("a", "c"))
    #>  [1] "w lm rt"                           "bershire h t w y"
    #>  [3] "pple"                              "exxapplen mapplebile"
    #>  [5] "m kessapplen"                      "unitedhe lth grappleup"
    #>  [7] "vs he lth"                         "gener l mappletapplers"
    #>  [9] "t t"                               "fapplerd mappletappler applemp ny"
    clean_strings(name_vec, common_words = data.table::data.table(word = c("general", "company"),
                                                                  replacement = c("bananas", "oranges")),
                  remove_words = TRUE)
    #>  [1] "walmart"            "bershire hataway"   "apple"
    #>  [4] "exxon mobile"       "mckesson"           "unitedhealth group"
    #>  [7] "cvs health"         "motors"             "atandt"
    #> [10] "ford motor"

## stem

`stem` is a boolean that lets you stem words, using `SnowballC::wordStem`. ‘stemming’ words means removing common suffixes:

    clean_strings(c( "call", "calling", "called"), stem = TRUE)
    #> [1] "call" "call" "call"

See the documentation in `SnowballC::wordStem` for details.