How to remove square brackets, etc. from address strings?

Hello r-help members,

I'm very grateful for the reply which Sarah Goslee sent to me in such 
a prompt and helpful manner.
It took me some time, but with a few amendments her suggestion now 
works not only for an example but for my entire data file as well:

results

  [1] "GERMANY"         "GERMANY"         "GERMANY"        "GERMANY"
  [5] "GERMANY"         "GERMANY"         "GERMANY"        "GERMANY"
...

Thank you very much for that, dear Sarah!

All these names actually belong to the very first record, though, 
which contains eight addresses instead of only one:

testdata[1]

  [1] "[Engel, Kathrin M. Y.; Schroeck, Kristin; Schoeneberg, Torsten; 
Schulz, Angela] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, Inst Biochem, Leipzig, Germany; 
[Teupser, Daniel; Holdt, Lesca Miriam; Thiery, Joachim] Univ Leipzig, 
Fac Med, Inst Lab Med Clin Chem & Mol Diagnost, Leipzig, Germany; 
[Toenjes, Anke; Kern, Matthias; Blueher, Matthias; Stumvoll, Michael] 
Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, Dept Internal Med, Leipzig, Germany; [Dietrich, 
Kerstin; Kovacs, Peter] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, Interdisciplinary Ctr 
Clin Res, Leipzig, Germany; [Kruegel, Ute] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, 
Rudolf Boehm Inst Pharmacol & Toxicol, Leipzig, Germany; [Scheidt, 
Holger A.; Schiller, Juergen; Huster, Daniel] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, 
Inst Med Phys & Biophys, Leipzig, Germany; [Brockmann, Gudrun A.] 
Humboldt Univ, Inst Anim Sci, D-10099 Berlin, Germany; [Augustin, 
Martin] Ingenium Pharmaceut AG, Martinsried, Germany"

results[1]

  [1] "GERMANY"

How can I put the country names back into their original lines / order?
This is an example of the correct result I'd like to receive:

results[1]

  [1] "GERMANY" "GERMANY" "GERMANY" "GERMANY" "GERMANY" "GERMANY" 
"GERMANY" "GERMANY"

How can I achieve this result?

I think counting the semicolons outside square brackets - i.e. the 
ones before a "[" but behind a "]" would be helpful in this regard, 
but I'm not sure how to do that, unfortunately. These semicolons 
directly follow the country names, like this, e.g.: "... Germany; [..."
If I add "+ 1" to their number it results in the number of addresses 
for each record / line.

Thank you very much in advance!

Faithfully yours,

Sabina Arndt


Am 26.05.2012 00:19, schrieb Sarah Goslee:

Part of your problem is that your regexes have spaces in them, so
that's what you're matching.

A small reproducible example would be more useful. I'm not feeling
inclined to wade through all your linked files on Friday evening, but
see if this helps:

testdata<- "[Engel, Kathrin M. Y.; Schroeck, Kristin; Schoeneberg, 
Torsten; Schulz, Angela] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, Inst Biochem, 
Leipzig, New Zealand; [Teupser, Daniel; Holdt, Lesca Miriam; Thiery, 
Joachim] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, Inst Lab Med Clin Chem&  Mol 
Diagnost, Leipzig, USA; [Toenjes, Anke; Kern, Matthias; Blueher, 
Matthias; Stumvoll, Michael] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, Dept Internal 
Med, Leipzig, Germany; [Dietrich, Kerstin; Kovacs, Peter] Univ 
Leipzig, Fac Med, Interdisciplinary Ctr Clin Res, Leipzig, Germany; 
[Kruegel, Ute] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, Rudolf Boehm Inst Pharmacol&  
Toxicol, Leipzig, Germany; [Scheidt, Holger A.; Schiller, Juergen; 
Huster, Daniel] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, Inst Med Phys&  Biophys, 
Leipzig, Germany; [Brockmann, Gudrun A.] Humboldt Univ, Inst Anim 
Sci, D-10099 Berlin, Germany; [Augustin, Martin] Ingenium Pharmaceut 
AG, Martinsried, Germany"
results<- gsub("\\[.*?\\]", "", testdata)
results<- unlist(strsplit(results, ";"))
results<- sapply(results, function(x)sub("^.*, ([A-Za-z ]*)$", 
"\\1", x))
names(results)<- NULL
results

[1] "New Zealand" "USA"         "Germany"     "Germany"     "Germany"
    "Germany"     "Germany"     "Germany"


Sarah

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Sabina 
Arndt<sabina.arndt at hotmail.de>  wrote:

Hello r-help members,

the solutions which Sarah Goslee and arun sent to me in such a 
prompt and
helpful manner work well with the examples I cut from the data.frame 
I'm
analyzing. Thank you very much for that!
I incorporated them into my R-script and discovered that it still 
doesn't
work properly, unfortunately. I have no idea why that's the case.
You see, I want to extract country names from the contents of 
tab-delimited
text files. This is an example of the data I'm using:
http://pastebin.com/mYZNDXg6
This is the script I'm using to import the data:
http://pastebin.com/Z10UUH3z (It requires the text files to be in a 
folder
which doesn't contain any other .txt files.)
This is the script I'm using to extract the country names:
http://pastebin.com/G37fuPba
This is the string that's in the relevant field of the first record I'm
working on:

[Engel, Kathrin M. Y.; Schroeck, Kristin; Schoeneberg, Torsten; Schulz,
Angela] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, Inst Biochem, Leipzig, Germany; 
[Teupser,
Daniel; Holdt, Lesca Miriam; Thiery, Joachim] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, 
Inst
Lab Med Clin Chem&  Mol Diagnost, Leipzig, Germany; [Toenjes, Anke; 
Kern,
Matthias; Blueher, Matthias; Stumvoll, Michael] Univ Leipzig, Fac 
Med, Dept
Internal Med, Leipzig, Germany; [Dietrich, Kerstin; Kovacs, Peter] Univ
Leipzig, Fac Med, Interdisciplinary Ctr Clin Res, Leipzig, Germany;
[Kruegel, Ute] Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, Rudolf Boehm Inst Pharmacol&  
Toxicol,
Leipzig, Germany; [Scheidt, Holger A.; Schiller, Juergen; Huster, 
Daniel]
Univ Leipzig, Fac Med, Inst Med Phys&  Biophys, Leipzig, Germany;
[Brockmann, Gudrun A.] Humboldt Univ, Inst Anim Sci, D-10099 Berlin,
Germany; [Augustin, Martin] Ingenium Pharmaceut AG, Martinsried, 
Germany

This is the incorrect result my extraction script gives me for the 
first
record:

C1s[1]

  [1] "[ENGEL,  KATHRIN M. Y." "KRISTIN"                "TORSTEN"
  [4] "GERMANY"                "DANIEL"                 "LESCA MIRIAM"
  [7] "GERMANY"                "ANKE"                   "MATTHIAS"
[10] "MATTHIAS"               "GERMANY"                "KERSTIN"
[13] "GERMANY"                "GERMANY"                "[SCHEIDT,  
HOLGER
A."
[16] "JUERGEN"                "GERMANY"                "HUMBOLDT"
[19] "GERMANY"

For some reason the first and sixth pair of the eight square 
brackets are
not removed ... Do you understand why?
Instead I'd like to get this result, though:

C1s[1]

  [1] "GERMANY"        "GERMANY"        "GERMANY"
  [4] "GERMANY"        "GERMANY"        "GERMANY"
  [7] "HUMBOLDT"        "GERMANY"

What am I doing wrong? What are the errors in my R-script?
Would anybody be so kind as to take a look and help me out, please?
Thank you very much in advance!

Faithfully yours,

Sabina Arndt