Prev 299419 / 398503 Next

Splitting a character vector.

John Kane

Sat, Jul 7, 2012 3:19 PM

Thanks Jeff.
I actually had that figured out after a good hour of pounding my head against the wall but I still could not seem to get the syntax correct.  I think I misunderstand strpsplt() just enough to keep making dumb mistakes.

John Kane
Kingston ON Canada

-----Original Message-----
From: jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us
Sent: Sat, 07 Jul 2012 15:12:16 -0700
To: ruipbarradas at sapo.pt, jrkrideau at inbox.com
Subject: Re: [R] Splitting a character vector.

Just to clarify, the regex engine wants to see a \ before the ( if it is
to treat it as an ordinary character. However, the source code
interpreter also treats \ as an escape character. In order to get a \
into the string, you have to escape it. So it takes two \ characters in
source code to obtain one \ character in memory where the regex code can
"see" it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Newmiller                        The     .....       .....  Go
Live...
DCN:<jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us>        Basics: ##.#.       ##.#.  Live
Go...
                                      Live:   OO#.. Dead: OO#..  Playing
Research Engineer (Solar/Batteries            O.O#.       #.O#.  with
/Software/Embedded Controllers)               .OO#.       .OO#.
rocks...1k
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

Rui Barradas <ruipbarradas at sapo.pt> wrote:

Hello,

Try the following.

open.par <- " \\("  # with a blank before '('
close.par <- "\\)"
result <- strsplit(sub(close.par, "", dd1), open.par)


Why the two '\\'? Because '(' is a meta-character so it must be
escaped.
But '\' is a meta character so it must also be escaped.

Then choose the right way to separate the two, maybe something like

ix <- rep(c(TRUE, FALSE), length(result))
unlist(result)[ix]
unlist(result)[!ix]


Hope this helps,

Rui Barradas

Em 07-07-2012 22:37, John Kane escreveu:

I am lousy at simple regex and I have not found a solution to a

simple problem.

I have a vector with some character values that I want to split.
Sample data
dd1  <-  c( "XXY (mat harry)","XXY (jim bob)", "CAMP (joe blow)",

"ALP (max jack)")

Desired result
dd2  <-  data.frame( xx = c("XXY", "XXY", "CAMP", "ALP"), yy = c("mat

harry", "jim bob" , "joe blow", "max jack"))

I thought I should be able to split the characters with strsplit but

either I am misunderstanding the function or don't know how to escape a
"(" properly in an effort to at least get   "XXY" "(mat harry)"

Any pointers would be appreciated
Thanks
John Kane
Kingston ON Canada

____________________________________________________________
FREE 3D MARINE AQUARIUM SCREENSAVER - Watch dolphins, sharks & orcas

______________________________________________
R-help at r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide

http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.


______________________________________________
R-help at r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

____________________________________________________________
FREE 3D EARTH SCREENSAVER - Watch the Earth right on your desktop!

Thread (11 messages)

John Kane Splitting a character vector. Jul 7 Rui Barradas Splitting a character vector. Jul 7 John Kane Splitting a character vector. Jul 7 Rui Barradas Splitting a character vector. Jul 7 Jeff Newmiller Splitting a character vector. Jul 7 John Kane Splitting a character vector. Jul 7 John Kane Splitting a character vector. Jul 7 Rui Barradas Splitting a character vector. Jul 7 John Kane Splitting a character vector. Jul 7 David Winsemius Splitting a character vector. Jul 7 John Kane Splitting a character vector. Jul 8