stringb provides a zero-dependency (mostly) drop in replacement for stringr implemented on top of base R regular expressions. This is useful if you are finding stringr's stringi dependency to be onerous for your users (since it requires compilation and a large unicode database).

stringb should match stringr behaviour as much as possible. The main exceptions are listed below:

• stringb uses either Perl-compatible regexps (the default) or POSIX 1003.2 extended regexps (with regexp()). By and large, these are represent subsets of the ICU backed engine that stringi provides, but there maybe be subtle differences in edge cases.

• stringr always returns UTF-8 encoded strings; stringb follows the same rules as base R.

• Most stringr functions are recycled over all arguments. stringb provides much more limited recycling: pattern is not recycled; and str_sub() only recycles start and stop, not string.

You can install the development version of stringb with:

remotes::install_github("hadley/stringb")