How to use str_detect being FALSE in a if statement r to append a value

Question

I have the following vector of hashtags:

hashtags <- c("#data", "#datascience", "#datascienceiscool")

And I'm trying to write a code that says if a string is NOT present (in this example, let's say "#datascienceinR"), then append it to the vector. If it is there, no other action needs to be taken. I've tried this:

library(tidyverse)

all_hashtags <- if(str_detect(hashtags, "#datascienceinR") = FALSE) {

  append(hashtags, "#datascienceinR")

}

But I get this error:

Error: unexpected '=' in "all_hashtags <- if(str_detect(hashtags, "#datascienceinR") ="

>   append(hashtags, "#datascienceinR")

[1] "#data"             

[2] "#datascience"      

[3] "#datascienceiscool"

[4] "#datascienceinR"   

> }

Error: unexpected '}' in "}"

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The = is assignment operator and not == (comparison operator)

if(str_detect(hashtags, "#datascienceinR") = FALSE)

                                           ^

Also, instead of doing the == FALSE, it is better to negate (!)

!str_detect(hashtags, "#datascienceinR")

The third issue is the use of if/else as if/else expects a logical vector of length 1 and not more than one. Here, the 'hashtags' is a vector of length 3 and the str_detect also returns the same length of TRUE/FALSE logical vector. So, we need to wrap with all

all_hashtags <- if(all(!str_detect(hashtags, "#datascienceinR"))) {

       append(hashtags, "#datascienceinR")

 } 

all_hashtags

#[1] "#data"              "#datascience"       "#datascienceiscool" "#datascienceinR"

It can also be written with the union (assuming there are no duplicate elements)

hashtags <- union(hashtags, "datascienceinR")  

If there are duplicate elements and want to keep them, another option is union from vessels

library(vecsets)

hashtags <- vunion(hashtags, "datascienceinR")  

If you want to know more about the Data Science then do check out the following Data Science which will help you in understanding Data Science from scratch