[R] split strings

[Monica Pisica]

Hi everybody,
 
I have a vector of characters and i would like to extract certain parts. My vector is named metr_list:
 
[1] "F:/Naval_Live_Oaks/2005/data//BE.tif"  
[2] "F:/Naval_Live_Oaks/2005/data//CH.tif"  
[3] "F:/Naval_Live_Oaks/2005/data//CRR.tif" 
[4] "F:/Naval_Live_Oaks/2005/data//HOME.tif"

And i would like to extract BE, CH, CRR, and HOME in a different vector named "names.id" for example. I read the help files for sub and grep and the likes but i have to recognize that i did not understand it. So i've done this (which does the job but extremely clumsy):
 
b <- strsplit(metr_list, "//")
b <- unlist(b)
d <- strsplit(b, "\\.")
d <- unlist(d)
names.id <- d[c(2, 5, 8, 11)]

Can anybody show what would be the proper way to achieve this with some explanations?
 
Thanks,
 
Monica
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