Extract best match from string-distance matrix

Question

I am having trouble extract best match from string-distance matrix.

I am using the package stringdist to compute string-distance matrix.

For example, i am generating my matrix using these lines of code.

library(stringdist)
lookup <- c('Dog', 'Cat', 'Bear')
data <- c('Do g', 'Do gg', 'Caat')
d.matrix <- stringdistmatrix(a = lookup, b = data, useNames="strings",method="cosine")

The matrix looks something like this

My approach is to extract the cosine similarity with lowest number being the best match.

For example, "Do g" would match with "Dog"

What i want to generate is a matching pair data-frame with consine similarity value

data  |  matchwith  |  cosine.s

Do g       Dog         0.1338746
Do gg      Dog         0.1271284
Caat       Cat         0.05719096

I have no clue how to get the data to the table format that i want (above).

Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

The which.min function is a good solution for this problem.
This a solution using base R:

library(stringdist)
lookup <- c('Dog', 'Cat', 'Bear')
data <- c('Do g', 'Do gg', 'Caat')
d.matrix <- stringdistmatrix(a = lookup, b = data, useNames="strings",method="cosine")

#list of minimun cosine.s
  cosines<-apply(d.matrix, 2, min)

#return list of the row number of the minimum value
  minlist<-apply(d.matrix, 2, which.min) 
#return list of matching values
  matchwith<-lookup[minlist]

#final answer
answer<-data.frame(data, matchwith, cosines)