Utility functions to easily check if a strings starts or ends with a given pattern

start_end_str.R

starts_with <- function(vars, match, ignore.case = TRUE) {
  if (ignore.case) match <- tolower(match)
  n <- nchar(match)

  if (ignore.case) vars <- tolower(vars)
  substr(vars, 1, n) == match
}

ends_with <- function(vars, match, ignore.case = TRUE) {
  if (ignore.case) match <- tolower(match)
  n <- nchar(match)

  if (ignore.case) vars <- tolower(vars)
  length <- nchar(vars)

  substr(vars, pmax(1, length - n + 1), length) == match
}