R Identify & Count Exact Matches of Pattern in String (2 Examples)

In this R tutorial you’ll learn how to identify the index position and how to count exact matches in character strings.

Creation of Example Data

x <- c("abc", "abc_1", "abc", "abc_2", "abc")    # Example vector in R
x                                                # Show example vector in RStudio console
# [1] "abc"   "abc_1" "abc"   "abc_2" "abc"

Example 1: Get Exact Match Positions of Pattern in Character String Vector

which(x == "abc")                                # Find index positions
# [1] 1 3 5

Example 2: Count Exact Matches of Pattern in Character String Vector

sum(x == "abc")                                  # Count occurrences
# [1] 3

Further Resources & Related Tutorials

Have a look at the following tutorials. They focus on topics such as character strings, vectors, numeric values, and extracting data.

• How to Extract Numeric Values from Vector of Character Strings
• Extract Rows where Data Frame Column Partially Matches Character String
• How to Count the Number of Words in a Character String