[R] separate a variable in several variables

[Wacek Kusnierczyk]

CE.KA wrote:
>
>      x
> 1   12F
> 2   13 AD
> 3   356PO
> 4   1D
> 5   GRT
> 6   PO52
> 7   LN4Z
>
> Is there a way to separarate x in 2 variables:
> y: only numeric caracters
> z: only alpha caracters
> For exemple:
>      x           y          z
> 1   12F        12         F
> 2   13 AD     13         AD
> 3   356PO     356      PO
> 4   1D          1         D
> 5   GRT        0         GRT
> 6   PO52      52      PO
> 7   LN4Z      4         LNZ
>
>   

if you need it quickly, here is a hack.  there may be better ways.

# some rubbish data
d = data.frame(x = replicate(10, paste(sample(c(letters, 0:9, " "), 10),
collapse="")))

patterns = paste("[", c("^", ""), "A-Za-z]| ", sep="")

for (i in  1:2)  d[patterns[i]] =  gsub(patterns[i], "", d$x)


tweak the regex patterns accordingly to your demand for whitespace etc.
rename the columns as you like.

vQ