[R] replacing text

[Thomas Lumley]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2002, Marc Schwartz wrote in reply to>>
> >> Position and number of dots vary, and not follow specific pattern.
> >> I wish to replace all the dots by "_" in vect, so that it
> >> looks like
> >> "a_bcd_ef","gh_i", etc..
<snip>
>
> Be Careful!  The "_" character is an assignment operator!
>
> gh_i
>
> is the same as
>
> gh <- i
>

but only if you evaluate it.  This sort of transformation might often be
needed in transferring data to/from another system where "." is special
but "_" isn't. It's done (in C code) in read.dta/write.dta in the foreign
package, for example.

	-thomas

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