R help - Jan 2014 - Patterns on postal codes

Hi all,

I'm pretty new to R and have a question. I have a postal_code field which
can have a variety of values such as:
For US postal codes: 22942-0173 or 32601
For Canada postal codes: N9YZE6 or S7V 1J9

What I want to do is represent these as patterns, such as:
US: NNNNN-NNNN or NNNNN
Canada: ANAAAN or ANA NAN
where N = any number and A = any alpha character, space = space, etc (other
characters such as ' should be represented as '.

Ultimately I want to count these to see how many have a pattern of
NNNNN-NNNN, ANA NAN, etc so that I can visualize the outliers.

Does anyone know if there is a built-in function in R to do this?
Currently, the str() function on the postal_code field shows a factor with
90,993 levels which isn't particularly helpful.

Thanks in advance!

-- 
Jeff

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Hi

Something like this.

## 4 valid zips + 4 invalid zips
zipcode <- c("22942-0173", "32601", "N9YZE6",
"S7V 1J9", "0022942-0173", "32-601",
"NN9YZE6", "S7V  1J9")

tmp <- gsub("[[:space:]]", "_", zipcode)
tmp <- gsub("[[:alpha:]]", "A", tmp)
tmp <- gsub("[[:digit:]]", "N", tmp)

tmp
## [1] "NNNNN-NNNN"   "NNNNN"        "ANAAAN"     
"ANA_NAN"      "NNNNNNN-NNNN"
## [6] "NN-NNN"       "AANAAAN"      "ANA__NAN"

patterns <- c("NNNNN-NNNN", "NNNNN", "ANAAAN",
"ANA_NAN")

zipcode[tmp %in% patterns]
## [1] "22942-0173" "32601"      "N9YZE6"    
"S7V 1J9"
zipcode[!tmp %in% patterns]
## [1] "0022942-0173" "32-601"       "NN9YZE6"    
"S7V  1J9"


Yours sincerely / Med venlig hilsen


Frede Aakmann T?gersen
Specialist, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Plant Performance & Modeling

Technology & Service Solutions
T +45 9730 5135
M +45 2547 6050
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http://www.vestas.com

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at
r-project.org]
> On Behalf Of Jeff Johnson
> Sent: 8. januar 2014 00:11
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Patterns on postal codes
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm pretty new to R and have a question. I have a postal_code field
which
> can have a variety of values such as:
> For US postal codes: 22942-0173 or 32601
> For Canada postal codes: N9YZE6 or S7V 1J9
> 
> What I want to do is represent these as patterns, such as:
> US: NNNNN-NNNN or NNNNN
> Canada: ANAAAN or ANA NAN
> where N = any number and A = any alpha character, space = space, etc (other
> characters such as ' should be represented as '.
> 
> Ultimately I want to count these to see how many have a pattern of
> NNNNN-NNNN, ANA NAN, etc so that I can visualize the outliers.
> 
> Does anyone know if there is a built-in function in R to do this?
> Currently, the str() function on the postal_code field shows a factor with
> 90,993 levels which isn't particularly helpful.
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> --
> Jeff
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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