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Please assist -- Unable to remove '-' character from char vector--

5 messages · Jim Lemon, PIKAL Petr, Sunny Singha +1 more

Original
Sunny Singha
# 
Hi,
I have a char vector with year values. Some cells have single year
value '2001-' and some have range like 1996-2007.
I need to remove hyphen character '-' from all the values within the
character vector named as 'end'. After removing the hyphen I need to
get the last
number from the cells where there are year range values i.e if the
cell has range 1996-2007, the code should return me 2007.

How could I get this done?

 Below are the values within this char vector:
[1] "2001-"            "1992-"            "2013-"            "2013-"
          "2013-"            "2013-"
 [7] "2003-"            "2010-"            "2009-"            "1986-"
          "2012-"            "2003-"
[13] "2005-"            "2013-"            "2003-"            "2013-"
          "1993?2007, 2010-" "2012-"
[19] "1984?1992, 1996-" "2015-"            "2009-"            "2000-"
          "2005-"            "1997-"
[25] "2012-"            "1997-"            "2002-"            "2006-"
          "1992-"            "2007-"
[31] "1997-"            "1982-"            "2015-"            "2015-"
          "2010-"            "1996?2007, 2011-"
[37] "2004-"            "1999-"            "2007-"            "1996-"
          "2013-"            "2012-"
[43] "2012-"            "2010-"            "2011-"            "1994-"
          "2014-"

I tried below command--> gsub('[-|,]', '', end)
This did remove all the hyphen character but not from cells having
range year values.Below is the result after executing above command:
As you see hypphen character is removed from single values but not
from ranges. Please guide.
[1] "2001"           "1992"           "2013"           "2013"
  "2013"           "2013"           "2003"
 [8] "2010"           "2009"           "1986"           "2012"
  "2003"           "2005"           "2013"
[15] "2003"           "2013"           "1993?2007 2010" "2012"
  "1984?1992 1996" "2015"           "2009"
[22] "2000"           "2005"           "1997"           "2012"
  "1997"           "2002"           "2006"
[29] "1992"           "2007"           "1997"           "1982"
  "2015"           "2015"           "2010"
[36] "1996?2007 2011" "2004"           "1999"           "2007"
  "1996"           "2013"           "2012"
[43] "2012"           "2010"           "2011"           "1994"
  "2014"

Regards,
Sunny Singha
Jim Lemon
# 
Hi Sunny,
Try this:

# notice that I have replaced the fancy hyphens with real hyphens
end<-c("2001-","1992-","2013-","2013-","2013-","2013-",
 "1993-2007","2010-","2012-","1984-1992","1996-","2015-")
splitends<-sapply(end,strsplit,"-")
last_bit(x) return(x[length(x)])
sapply(splitends,last_bit)

Jim

On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Sunny Singha
<sunnysingha.analytics at gmail.com> wrote:
PIKAL Petr
# 
Hi
You probably meant
last_bit <- function(x) return(x[length(x)])
And good finalisation is

as.numeric(sapply(splitends,last_bit))

Cheers
Petr
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Sunny Singha
# 
Thank you Jim,
The code did assist me to get the what I needed.
Also, I learnt that there are different types of dashes
(en-dash/em-dash/hyphen) as explained on this site :
http://www.punctuationmatters.com/hyphen-dash-n-dash-and-m-dash/

I achieved it by executing below command after going through this page
on stackoverflow:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9223795/how-to-correctly-deal-with-escaped-unicode-characters-in-r-e-g-the-em-dash

splitends<-sapply(end,strsplit,"-|\u2013|,")

where '\u2013' is, i guess, the unicode for en-dash/em-dash character
in the ranges values.
I had scrapped the HTML table from this web page :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Heritage_in_Danger
and range values does have en-dash characters.

For now the issue is resolved but how does one capture values similar
to  '\u2013' for other possible special cases to be specified in the
regex ?

Regards,
Sunny Singha.
On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Jim Lemon <drjimlemon at gmail.com> wrote:
David Winsemius
# 
It's possible to target sequences of Unicode characters using a regex character class which does have a sequence operator. (R's sequence operator fails in my efforts.)

x <- "\"em\u2013dash\" \"em?dash\" \" em \u2016 dash\""
gsub('[\u2013:\u2016]', "", x)   # removes both
#[1] "\"emdash\" \"emdash\" \" em  dash\""