vector of character with unequal width
On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 03:50:13PM +0000, jose Bartolomei wrote:
[...]
I was thinking to create a character vector of 0's 9-nchar(xx). Then paste it to xx. 9-nchar(xx) [1] 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 [38] 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 [75] 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 ......1 Nevertheless, I have not been able to create this vector nor I do not know if this is the best option.
Did you consider something like the following?
xx <- c("abc", "abcd", "abcde")
z1 <- rep("000000000", times=length(xx))
z2 <- substr(z1, 1, 9 - nchar(xx))
yy <- paste(z2, xx, sep="")
cbind(yy)
# yy
#[1,] "000000abc"
#[2,] "00000abcd"
#[3,] "0000abcde"
Petr Savicky.