Replace multiple strings in one gsub() or chartr() statement in R?

Question

I have a string variable containing alphabet[a-z], space[ ], and apostrophe[\'],eg. x <- \"a\'b c\" I want to replace apostrophe[\'] with blank[], and replac

Answer 1

I'd go with the quite fast function stri_replace_all_fixed from library(stringi):

library(stringi)    
stri_replace_all_fixed("a'b c", pattern = c("'", " "), replacement = c("", "_"), vectorize_all = FALSE)

Here is a benchmark taking into account most of the other suggested solutions:

library(stringi)
library(microbenchmark)
library(gsubfn)
library(mgsub)
library(magrittr)
library(dplyr)

x_gsubfn <-
x_mgsub <-
x_nested_gsub <-
x_magrittr <-
x_stringi <- "a'b c"

microbenchmark("gsubfn" = { gsubfn(".", list("'" = "", " " = "_"), x_gsubfn) },
               "mgsub" = { mgsub::mgsub(x_mgsub, c("'", " "), c("", "_")) },
               "nested_gsub" = { gsub("Find", "Replace", gsub("Find","Replace", x_nested_gsub)) },
               "magrittr" = { x_magrittr %<>% gsub("'", "", .) %>% gsub(" ", "_", .) },
               "stringi" = { stri_replace_all_fixed(x_stringi, pattern = c("'", " "), replacement = c("", "_"), vectorize_all = FALSE) }
               )

---

Unit: microseconds
        expr     min       lq      mean   median       uq     max neval
      gsubfn 458.217 482.3130 519.12820 513.3215 538.0100 715.371   100
       mgsub 180.521 200.8650 221.20423 216.0730 231.6755 460.587   100
 nested_gsub  14.615  15.9980  17.92178  17.7760  18.7630  40.687   100
    magrittr 113.765 133.7125 148.48202 142.9950 153.0680 296.261   100
     stringi   3.950   7.7030   8.41780   8.2960   9.0860  26.071   100