[R] character manipulation

[Nicolas Degallier]

Dear R'helpers,

I am reading lines in a .txt file
Each line is stocked into a n elements object, as this:



[958] " 422 287 339  31 203 602 547 1026 500 366 346 227"
[959] " 410  67  11 220 110 451 562 598 732 163 163 220"
[960] " 179 513  95 186 102 595 333 1289 804 210 294 459"
[961] " 276 153 307 138 126 233 623 739 521 421 209  75"
[962] "  64 392  60  45 332 371 290 887 599 106  62 184"
[963] " 171 168 374  43  71 567 1110 799 960 189 339 279"
[964] " 151 353 648 150  85 422 883 962 923 296 228 273"
[965] " 213 805 403  43 271 445 463 846 1124 345 295  85"
[966] " 574 420 200  39 243 187 249 378 714 318 286 114"
[967] "  85  73 192  91 146 484 710 782 750 321 261  65"
[968] "  53 487  27  76 150 345 663 848 620 192 129 187"
[969] " 461 216  8 251 279 558 1012 838 1330 258 138 115"
[970] "  53  83  39 298 117 488 880 815 1087 390 266 355"
[971] " 225 184 173 121 167 416 411 667 605 172  60 157"
[972] " 318 138 552 192 100 461 450 852 190 361  17 192"



Now, I would like to determine how many " " (space) there are in each  
line ...

After to have wipes out the extra spaces (double spaces) with

  data1[i]<-gsub(x=data1[i],pattern="  ",replacement="  
",fixed=FALSE,extended=FALSE)

I have attempted with regrexpr, sub, strsplit and many other  
character fonctions but I could not obtain the number of " " in each  
line, in order to further do a test on it.

The answer may be trivial but at this time I gave up!!

Cheers

Nicolas Degallier

UMR 7159 / IRD UR182
Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat, Expérimentation et  
Approches Numériques (LOCEAN)
Tour 45-55, 4e ét., case 100, 4 place Jussieu
75252  Paris Cedex 5  France
tél: (33) 01 44 27 51 57
fax: (33) 01 44 27 38 05

E-mail: <Nicolas.Degallier at ird.fr>
pdf reprints (login="anonymous"; password="your at email.address"):  
ftp://ftp.lodyc.jussieu.fr/LOCEAN/ndelod