[R] Splitting a character variable into a numeric one and a character one?

[Gabor Grothendieck]

Here is one more solution:

library(gsubfn)
s <- c("123abc", "12cd34", "1e23")

out <- gsubfn("^([[:digit:]]+)(.*)", paste, s, backref = -2)
read.table(textConnection(out))

It assumes there are no spaces in the strings.  If
there are then choose a sep= that does not appear
and do this:

sep = ","
f <- function(x, y) paste(x, y, sep = sep)
out <- gsubfn("^([[:digit:]]+)(.*)", f, s, backref = -2)
read.table(textConnection(out), sep = sep)


On 9/25/06, Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at gmail.com> wrote:
> strapply in package gsubfn can do that:
>
>
> library(gsubfn)
> s <- c("123abc", "12cd34", "1e23")
>
> out <- strapply(s, "^([[:digit:]]+)(.*)", c)
> out <- do.call(rbind, out) # as a matrix
>
> data.frame(x = out[,1], num = as.numeric(out[,2]), char = out[,3]) #
> as a data.frame
>
>
> On 9/25/06, Frank Duan <fhduan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I have a data with a variable like this:
> >
> > Column 1
> >
> > "123abc"
> > "12cd34"
> > "1e23"
> > ...
> >
> > Now I want to do an operation that can split it into two variables:
> >
> > Column 1        Column 2         Column 3
> >
> > "123abc"         123                  "abc"
> > "12cd34"         12                    "cd34"
> > "1e23"             1                      "e23"
> > ...
> >
> > So basically, I want to split the original variabe into a numeric one and a
> > character one, while the splitting element is the first character in Column
> > 1.
> >
> > I searched the forum with key words "strsplit"and "substr", but still can't
> > solve this problem. Can anyone give me some hints?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> > FD
> >
> >        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >
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