regular expressions

gsub("^(plif)([a-z]*)", "\\1ONE", words)

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
[mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of GOUACHE David
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 12:15 PM
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R] regular expressions

Hello all,
 
Still fighting with regular expressions and such, I am again stuck:
 
Suppose I have a vector of character chains. In this vector, 
I wish to identify which character chains start with a given 
pattern, and then replace everything that comes after said pattern.
 
Here is a quick example :
 
words<-c("plifboum","plafboum","ploufbang","plifplaf")
 
I want to end up with something like this:
 
"plifONE","plafboum","ploufbang","plifONE"
 
All I can produce so far is this :
gsub("\\bplif.","ONE",words,perl=T)
 
which turns out :
"ONEboum","plafboum","ploufbang","ONEplaf"
 
Thanks in advance for your help.
 
David Gouache

Arvalis - Institut du V?g?tal

Station de La Mini?re

78280 Guyancourt

Tel: 01.30.12.96.22 / Port: 06.86.08.94.32