[R] grep(): returning the matched value

[Romain Francois]

Macnamara, Aidan wrote:
> Hi, 
>  
> I'm looking to use the grep function (or something else) to return the matched pattern as opposed to the whole element. For example:
>  
> x <- c("pjhj24jhjhd")
> grep("[[:digit:]]{2}", x, value=T) returns "people", whereas I simply want "24".  
>  
> Any help would be appreciated, 
>  
> Thanks, Aidan
>   
Hi,

You need gsub, as in:

R> gsub("^.*([[:digit:]]{2}).*$","\\1", x )
[1] "24"

Cheers,

Romain

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