split character string in matrix into character vector and numeric vector

x <- "B03_MAH     0.2115  0.2087  0.2087  0.2147  0.2115  0.2176"
strsplit(x, " +")

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
[mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Kim Milferstedt
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 1:11 PM
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R] split character string in matrix into character 
vector and numeric vector

Hello,

I've got a matrix consisting of one column with n rows. Each 
field in the matrix is filled with a character vector.

I would like to convert this matrix into a character vector 
containing the B03_MAH-type entries from the beginning of 
each row and a data.frame that contains the numeric data, but 
I am stuck.

I have tried to use textConnection with sep = "  " but since 
there is sometimes more than two spaces separating the 
entries, I obtain a result with columns full of NAs.

Then I tried sub() to replace the all multi-spaces to get 
only one space that separates each entry but that didn't work either.

Do you know a good way to convert this matrix?

Thanks already,

Kim

taxa.vec "B03_MAH     0.2115  0.2087  0.2087  0.2147  0.2115  0.2176" 
taxa.vec "F02_SSBH    0.2162  0.2191  0.2133  0.2130  0.2220  0.2158" 
taxa.vec "G04_MAH     0.2083  0.2111  0.2055  0.2115  0.2140  0.2087" 
taxa.vec "A04_MAH     0.2097  0.2126  0.2069  0.2065  0.2097  0.2037" 
taxa.vec "E03_MAH     0.2097  0.2069  0.2069  0.2130  0.2155  0.2101"