How to use %in% to make string replacements (str_replace) in R

Question

I am trying to find an elegant way to use %in% and str_replace() to clean up gender. I know I can use regx() to do the same thing, but am looking at alternative ways to tackle the same problem.

My code is:

sex <- c("Male","girl","boy", "female")
male <- c("Male", "boy")
female <- c("girl", "female")

I know this code isn't right, but illustrates what I am trying to do

str_replace(sex, sex %in% male, "M")
str_replace(sex, sex %in% female, "F")

Any tips?

Answer 1

You can do this with replace, not str_replace:

sex <- c("Male","girl","boy", "female")
male <- c("Male", "boy")
female <- c("girl", "female")

sex <- replace(sex, which(sex %in% male), "M")
sex <- replace(sex, which(sex %in% female), "F")
sex
#> [1] "M" "F" "M" "F"

^{Created on 2018-10-28 by the reprex package (v0.2.1)}