Splitting a character vector.

-----Original Message-----
From: ruipbarradas at sapo.pt
Sent: Sat, 07 Jul 2012 22:55:41 +0100
To: jrkrideau at inbox.com
Subject: Re: [R] Splitting a character vector.

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