Maybe I don't understand the question. I can think of four ways to count, none of which give me 7:
a <- "Hello World" b <- "Hello Peter" #counting duplicates and the space: sa <- strsplit(a, split="")[[1]] sb <- strsplit(b, split="")[[1]] length(which(sb %in% sa == TRUE)) #counting the space but not the duplicates: sa <- unique(strsplit(a, split="")[[1]]) sb <- unique(strsplit(b, split="")[[1]]) length(which(sb %in% sa == TRUE)) #counting the duplicates but not the space: sa <- strsplit(a, split="")[[1]] sa <- sa[-which(sa == " ")] sb <- strsplit(b, split="")[[1]] sb <- sb[-which(sb ==" ")] length(which(sb %in% sa == TRUE)) #not counting duplicates or the space: sa <- unique(sa) sb <- unique(sb) length(which(sb %in% sa == TRUE)) What am I missing? On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Laetitia Schmid <laetitia.sch...@gmx.ch> wrote: > Hi! > Does anybody know a string function that would calculate how many characters > two strings share? I.e. ("Hello World","Hello Peter") would be 7. > Thanks. > Laetitia > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Ista Zahn Graduate student University of Rochester Department of Clinical and Social Psychology http://yourpsyche.org ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.