car::recode solution

Reference

• http://r-de-jeu.blogspot.com/2013/01/search-and-replace-are-you-tired-of.html

Solution with recode() in car package

Create data

basket <- c("apple", "banana", "lemon", "orange", "orange", "pear", "cherry")

Recoding Use car::recode() or Recode() to avoid a name conflict.

library(car)
car::recode(basket, '
                "banana" = "apple";
                "orange" = "pineapple"  ')

[1] "apple"     "apple"     "lemon"     "pineapple" "pineapple" "pear"      "cherry"   

car::recode(basket, '
                "banana" = "apple";
                "orange" = "pineapple";
                else     = "fig"        ')

[1] "fig"       "apple"     "fig"       "pineapple" "pineapple" "fig"       "fig"