Reduce each in a vector of strings to a given length

This is a simple "chop" at k characters, no fancy truncation at spaces or such. Optionally, this will make unique the resulting truncated strings. That way, truncation at character 4 of "Washington" and "Wash" and "Washingham" will not result in 3 values of "Wash", but rather "Wash", "Wash.1", and "Wash.2"

shorten(x, k = 20, unique = FALSE)

Arguments

x

character string

k

integer limit on length of string. Default is 20

unique

Default FALSE

Value

vector of character variables no longer than k

Author

Paul Johnson <pauljohn@ku.edu>

Examples

x <- c("Washington", "Washingham", "Washmylaundry")
shorten(x, 4)
#> [1] "Wash" "Wash" "Wash"
shorten(x, 4, unique = TRUE)
#> [1] "Wash"   "Wash.1" "Wash.2"