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Look for keywords variable names and descriptions in labelled data

Source: R/look_for.R
look_for.Rd

The look_for() function is designed to emulate the functionality of the Stata lookfor command in R. It provides a powerful tool for searching through large datasets, specifically targeting variable names, variable label descriptions, factor levels, and value labels. This function is handy for users working with extensive and complex datasets, enabling them to quickly and efficiently locate the variables of interest.

Usage

look_for(
  data,
  ...,
  labels = TRUE,
  values = TRUE,
  ignore.case = TRUE,
  details = c("basic", "none", "full")
)

Arguments

data

a data frame or a survey object

...

optional list of keywords, a character string (or several character strings), which can be formatted as a regular expression suitable for a base::grep() pattern, or a vector of keywords; displays all variables if not specified

labels

whether or not to search variable labels (descriptions); TRUE by default

values

whether or not to search within values (factor levels or value labels); TRUE by default

ignore.case

whether or not to make the keywords case sensitive; TRUE by default (case is ignored during matching)

details

add details about each variable (full details could be time consuming for big data frames, FALSE is equivalent to "none" and TRUE to "full")

Value

A tibble data frame featuring the variable position, name and description (if it exists) in the original data frame.

Examples


look_for(iris)
#>  pos variable     label col_type missing values    
#>  1   Sepal.Length —     dbl      0                 
#>  2   Sepal.Width  —     dbl      0                 
#>  3   Petal.Length —     dbl      0                 
#>  4   Petal.Width  —     dbl      0                 
#>  5   Species      —     fct      0       setosa    
#>                                          versicolor
#>                                          virginica 

# Look for a single keyword.

look_for(iris, "petal")
#>  pos variable     label col_type missing values
#>  3   Petal.Length —     dbl      0             
#>  4   Petal.Width  —     dbl      0             

look_for(iris, "s")
#>  pos variable     label col_type missing values    
#>  1   Sepal.Length —     dbl      0                 
#>  2   Sepal.Width  —     dbl      0                 
#>  5   Species      —     fct      0       setosa    
#>                                          versicolor
#>                                          virginica