str_c using " in R

Question

Could someone please help me while I'm trying to build this final line:

[1] ("mercury" AND "earth" AND "Jupiter" AND "Uranus" AND "Pluto?") 

By using below code

df <- structure(list(AND = c("mercury", "earth", "Jupiter", "Uranus", 
"Pluto?"), OR = c("venus", "Mars", "Saturn", "Neptune", "")), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, 
-5L))

# fist
first <- str_c(c(' (" ' ,df$AND[1], ' "  ' ), sep = "")

# in between
between <- str_c(df$AND[2:(nrow(df) - 1)], sep = '  " AND "  ')

# last
last <- str_c(c(' " ',df$AND[nrow(df)], ' ")  ' ), sep = "")

# full

str_c(c(first,between,last), sep = "")

But this how my result looks like:

[1] " (\" "   "mercury" " \"  "   "earth"   "Jupiter" "Uranus"  " \" "    "Pluto?"  " \")  " 

Answer 1

You can use :

library(stringr)
str_c('(', str_c(excel$AND, collapse  = ' AND '), ')')
#Similar using paste0
#paste0('(', paste0(excel$AND, collapse  = ' AND '), ')')
#[1] "(mercury AND earth AND Jupiter AND Uranus AND Pluto?)"

OR a base R version would be :

sprintf('(%s)', paste0(excel$AND, collapse  = ' AND '))
#[1] "(mercury AND earth AND Jupiter AND Uranus AND Pluto?)"

---

If we need quotes around each word we can twist sprintf output to :

tmp <- sprintf('("%s")', paste0(excel$AND, collapse  = '" AND "'))
cat(tmp)
#("mercury" AND "earth" AND "Jupiter" AND "Uranus" AND "Pluto?")