Skip to content

gsub help

2 messages · Debs Majumdar, Sarah Goslee

Debs Majumdar
# 
Hi,

?I am working with the following list of files:

[1] "study_chr1.one.phased.impute2.chunk1"?????????????? 
[2] "study_chr1.one.phased.impute2.chunk1_info"????????? 
[3] "study_chr1.one.phased.impute2.chunk1_info_by_sample"
[4] "study_chr1.one.phased.impute2.chunk1_summary"?????? 
[5] "study_chr1.one.phased.impute2.chunk1_warnings"??????

The folder has many other files. I am trying to use gsub to give me just this file: study_chr1.one.phased.impute2.chunk1

With Uwe's help I have tried the following:

fls <- list.files(pattern="^study") # which gives me the list above.

ufls <- unique(gsub("(_.*)_.*", "\\1", fls))? # which outputs

[1] "study_chr1.one.phased.impute2.chunk1"??????? 
[2] "study_chr1.one.phased.impute2.chunk1_info_by"



I just want the file under [1] but can't seem to figure it out at this moment. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Debs
Sarah Goslee
# 
Hi,
On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 7:59 PM, Debs Majumdar <debs_stata at yahoo.com> wrote:
So you want the file name that starts with study and ends in 1?

I'd use grep() rather than gsub(), since you just want to match from a
list, or is there more going on than in your example?

You didn't give a reproducible dataset, but here's a fake one,
matching strings that begin with "a" instead of "study", and ending
with "1" as in your example:
[1] "abcd1"

You might really just need
yourdata[grepl("1$", yourdata)]
to select filenames that end in 1.

If that's all you really need, you've made it far too complicated.

Sarah