Fuzzy Match and replace strings in dataframe using custom dictionnary

Question

I have this dataframe with similars (strings with small syntax differences)

 place1 <- c("pondichery ", "Pondichery", "Pondichéry", "Port-Louis", "Port Louis  ")
 place2 <- c("Lorent", "Pondichery", " Lorient", "port-louis", "Port Louis")
 place3 <- c("Loirent", "Pondchéry", "Brest", "Port Louis", "Nantes")

 places2clean <- data.frame(place1, place2, place3)

Here is my custom dictionnary

  dictionnary <- c("Pondichéry", "Lorient", "Port-Louis", "Nantes", "Brest")

  dictionnary <- data.frame(dictionnary)

I want to match and replace all strings based on a custom dictionnary.

Expecteds results :

    place1     place2     place3
 Pondichéry     Lorient    Lorient
 Pondichéry Pondichéry Pondichéry
 Pondichéry    Lorient      Brest
 Port-Louis Port-Louis Port Louis
 Port-Louis   Port-Louis     Nantes

How can I use stringdistance for matching and replacing over all the dataframe?

Answer 1

The following first computes matrices of distances between each column and the dictionary and then gets the strings that have a smaller distance.

library(stringdist)

places2clean[] <- lapply(places2clean, trimws)

d <- lapply(places2clean, function(x) {
  sapply(dictionnary$dictionnary, function(y) stringdist(x, y))
})
res <- sapply(d, function(x){
  inx <- apply(x, 1, which.min)
  dictionnary$dictionnary[inx]
})

as.data.frame(res)
#      place1     place2     place3
#1 Pondichéry    Lorient    Lorient
#2 Pondichéry Pondichéry Pondichéry
#3 Pondichéry    Lorient      Brest
#4 Port-Louis Port-Louis Port-Louis
#5 Port-Louis Port-Louis     Nantes