[R] Remove all spaces from a string so it can be used by assign()

[Romain Francois]

On 07/03/2009 12:56 PM, Kurt Smith wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I have a string "56 Fe [1]" that I would like to use as a variable name by using "assign" however I think the spaces and brackets might be causing R some trouble.

Not really;

R> assign( "56 Fe [1]", 10 )
R> `56 Fe [1]`
[1] 10

> How can I change the string so that it just becomes 56Fe1 and can be used as a variable name.

56Fe1 is not good enough to be assigned without quotes

R> 56Fe1 <- 10
Error: unexpected symbol in "56Fe1"

You might be interested in make.names

R> make.names( "56 Fe [1]" )
[1] "X56.Fe..1."

Otherwise, to answer your question, you can :

R> gsub( "[^[:alnum:]]", "", "56 Fe [1]" )
[1] "56Fe1"


> Thank You
>
> Kurt


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Romain Francois
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http://romainfrancois.blog.free.fr
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