Fuzzy-match strings — get_fuzzy

This function returns the fuzzy matches for a character vector using a pool of potential matches. The distance between each string and each candidate in the pool is calculated using a specified method, and the candidate with the shortest distance to each string is returned.

Usage

get_fuzzy_match(
  old,
  new,
  method = c("osa", "lv", "dl", "lcs", "qgram", "cosine", "jaccard", "jw"),
  nthread = parallel::detectCores() - 1
)

Arguments

old: (character) vector of strings to fuzzy-match
new: (character) vector of strings to use as possible matches
method: method used to calculate distances between strings (see Details)
nthread: number of parallel threads (default all minus 1)

Value

(character) strings in old replaced with best matches in new

Details

This function uses stringdist::stringdistmatrix() to calculate distances between each requested string in old and the candidates in new. The method is one of the following: osa (default), lv, dl, lcs, qgram, cosine, jaccard, or jw. See the corresponding stringdist::stringdistmatrix() documentation.

Examples

if (FALSE) {
df$Country <- df$Country |> get_fuzzy_match(new=list_of_countries)
}