[R] Check if string has all alphabets or numbers

[jim holtman]

try this:

> mywords<- c("harry","met","sally","subway10","1800Movies","12345")
> grep("^[[:alpha:]]*$", mywords)  # letters
[1] 1 2 3
> grep("^[[:digit:]]*$", mywords)  # numbers
[1] 6
>

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 8:28 AM, Harsh <singhalblr at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi R users,
> I'd like to know if anyone has come across problems wherein it was necessary
> to check if strings contained all alphabets, some numbers or all numbers?
>
> In my attempt to test if a string is numeric, alpha-numeric (also includes
> if string is only alphabets) :
>
> # Reproducible R code below
> mywords<- c("harry","met","sally","subway10","1800Movies","12345")
>
> mywords.alphanum
> <-lapply(sapply(mywords,function(x)strsplit(x,NULL)),function(y)
> ifelse(sum(is.na(sapply(y,as.numeric))) == 0 & length(y) >
> 0,"numeric","alpha-numeric"))
>
> names(mywords.alphanum)[(which(mywords.alphanum == "numeric"))]
>
>
> I understand that such "one-liners"  (the second line of code above) that
> make multiple calls are discouraged, but I seem to find then fascinating.
>
> Looking forward to alternate solutions/packages  for the above problem.
>
> Thanks
> Harsh Singhal
>
>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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>



-- 
Jim Holtman
Cincinnati, OH
+1 513 646 9390

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?