calpeda wrote: > hi > I ve a list of item x = ( "xxxxx1" > "xxxxx2" > "yyyyx3") > > I need to extract a new vector y = ( "xxxx", > "xxxx", > "yyyy" > ) > I mean, for each item I need to extract the first 4 digit > How is that possible? > sub('^(\\d{4}).*', '\\1', x, perl=TRUE) vQ