Proper use of gsub / regular expressions in R?

Question

I have long lists of strings such as this machine readable example:

A <- list(c("Biology","Cell Biology","Art","Humanities, Multidisciplinary; Psychology, Experimental","Astronomy & Astrophysics; Physics, Particles & Fields","Economics; Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications; Social Sciences, Mathematical Methods","Geriatrics & Gerontology","Gerontology","Management","Operations Research & Management Science","Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence; Computer Science, Information Systems; Engineering, Electrical & Electronic","Economics; Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications; Social Sciences, Mathematical Methods; Statistics & Probability"))  

So it looks like this:

> A  
[[1]]  
 [1] "Biology"  
 [2] "Cell Biology"  
 [3] "Art"  
 [4] "Humanities, Multidisciplinary; Psychology, Experimental"  
 [5] "Astronomy & Astrophysics; Physics, Particles & Fields"  
 [6] "Economics; Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications; Social Sciences, Mathematical Methods"  
 [7] "Geriatrics & Gerontology"  
 [8] "Gerontology"  
 [9] "Management"  
[10] "Operations Research & Management Science"  
[11] "Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence; Computer Science, Information Systems; Engineering, Electrical & Electronic"  
[12] "Economics; Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications; Social Sciences, Mathematical Methods; Statistics & Probability"  

I would like to edit these terms and eliminate duplicates in order to get this result:

 [1] "Science"  
 [2] "Science"  
 [3] "Arts & Humanities"  
 [4] "Arts & Humanities; Social Sciences"  
 [5] "Science"  
 [6] "Social Sciences; Science"  
 [7] "Science"  
 [8] "Social Sciences"  
 [9] "Social Sciences"  
[10] "Science"  
[11] "Science"  
[12] "Social Sciences; Science"  

So far I only got this:

stringedit <- function(A)  
{  
  A <-gsub("Biology", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Cell Biology", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Art", "Arts & Humanities", A)  
  A <-gsub("Humanities, Multidisciplinary", "Arts & Humanities", A)  
  A <-gsub("Psychology, Experimental", "Social Sciences", A)  
  A <-gsub("Astronomy & Astrophysics", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Physics, Particles & Fields", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Economics", "Social Sciences", A)  
  A <-gsub("Mathematics", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Mathematics, Applied", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Social Sciences, Mathematical Methods", "Social Sciences", A)  
  A <-gsub("Geriatrics & Gerontology", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Gerontology", "Social Sciences", A)  
  A <-gsub("Management", "Social Sciences", A)  
  A <-gsub("Operations Research & Management Science", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Computer Science, Information Systems", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Engineering, Electrical & Electronic", "Science", A)  
  A <-gsub("Statistics & Probability", "Science", A)  
}  
B <- lapply(A, stringedit)  

But it does not work properly:

> B  
[[1]]  
 [1] "Science"  
 [2] "Cell Science"  
 [3] "Arts & Humanities"  
 [4] "Arts & Humanities; Social Sciences"  
 [5] "Science; Science"  
 [6] "Social Sciences; Science, Interdisciplinary Applications; Social Sciences"  
 [7] "Science"  
 [8] "Social Sciences"  
 [9] "Social Sciences"  
[10] "Operations Research & Social Sciences Science"  
[11] "Computer Science, Arts & Humanitiesificial Intelligence; Science; Science"  
[12] "Social Sciences; Science, Interdisciplinary Applications; Social Sciences; Science"  

How can I achieve the correct output mentioned above?
Thank you very much in advance for your consideration!

Answer 1

I found it easiest to have a two-column data.frame as a lookup, with one column for the course name and one column for the category. Here's an example:

course.categories <- data.frame(
  Course = 
  c("Art", "Humanities, Multidisciplinary", "Biology", "Cell Biology", 
    "Astronomy & Astrophysics", "Physics, Particles & Fields", "Mathematics", 
    "Mathematics, Applied", "Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications", 
    "Geriatrics & Gerontology", "Operations Research & Management Science", 
    "Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence", 
    "Computer Science, Information Systems", 
    "Engineering, Electrical & Electronic", "Statistics & Probability", 
    "Psychology, Experimental", "Economics", 
    "Social Sciences, Mathematical Methods", 
    "Gerontology", "Management"),
  Category =
  c("Arts & Humanities", "Arts & Humanities", "Science", "Science", 
    "Science", "Science", "Science", "Science", "Science", "Science", 
    "Science", "Science", "Science", "Science", "Science", "Social Sciences", 
    "Social Sciences", "Social Sciences", "Social Sciences", "Social Sciences"))

Then, assuming A as a list as in your question:

sapply(strsplit(unlist(A), "; "), 
       function(x) 
         paste(unique(course.categories[match(x, course.categories[["Course"]]),
                                        "Category"]), 
               collapse = "; "))
#  [1] "Science"                            "Science"                           
#  [3] "Arts & Humanities"                  "Arts & Humanities; Social Sciences"
#  [5] "Science"                            "Social Sciences; Science"          
#  [7] "Science"                            "Social Sciences"                   
#  [9] "Social Sciences"                    "Science"                           
# [11] "Science"                            "Social Sciences; Science"

match matches the values from A with the course names in the course.categories dataset and says which rows the match occurs on; this is used to extract the category the course belongs to. Then, unique makes sure we just have one of each category. paste puts things back together.