Trouble Understanding %>%

I am having a huge amount of trouble understanding %>%

I need an example to understand this. Here is my simple example:

v <- c("the cat the cat ran up the tree tree", "the dog ran up the up the tree", 
         "the squirrel squirrel ran up the tree")

The desired output is:

"the cat ran up the tree"
"the dog ran up the tree"
"the squirrel ran up the tree"

I wish to take:

v <- gsub('kat', 'cat', v) 
v <- gsub('dogg', 'dog', v) 
v <- gsub('squirrel', 'squirrrel', v)

And use:

gsub('kat', 'cat', v) %>%
gsub('dogg', 'dog', v) %>%
gsub('squirrel', 'squirrrel', v)

Can someone correct this for me?

I get the error:

Warning message:
In gsub(., "dogg", "dog", v) :
  argument 'pattern' has length > 1 and only the first element will be used

Solution

The pipe will by default place values into the first parameter of the next function. if you need to place the value in a different parameter position, you need to use the special . variable to indicate where you want it to go. For example

v %>% 
  gsub('kat', 'cat', .) %>%
  gsub('dogg', 'dog', .) %>%
  gsub('squirrel', 'squirrrel', .)