[R] applying strsplit to a whole column

[Dimitri Liakhovitski]

Thank you very much, everyone!
Dimitri

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 2:10 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> On Aug 4, 2010, at 1:42 PM, Dimitri Liakhovitski wrote:
>
>> I am sorry, I'd like to split my column ("names") such that all the
>> beginning of a string ("X..") is gone and only the rest of the text is
>> left.
>
> I could not tell whether it was the string "X.." or the pattern "X.." that
> was your goal for matching and removal.
>>
>> x<-data.frame(names=c("X..aba","X..abb","X..abc","X..abd"))
>> x$names<-as.character(x$names)
>
> a) Instead of "names" which is heavily used function name, use something
> more specific. Otherwise you get:
>> names(x)
> "names"  # and thereby avoid list comments about canines.
>
> b) Instead of coercing a character vector back to a character vector, use
> stringsAsFactors = FALSE.
>
>> x<-data.frame(nam1=c("X..aba","X..abb","X..abc","X..abd"),
>> stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
> #Thus is the pattern version:
>
>> x$nam1 <- gsub("X..",'', x$nam1)
>> x
>  nam1
> 1   aba
> 2   abb
> 3   abc
> 4   abd
>
> This is the string version:
>> x<-data.frame(nam1=c("X......aba","X.y.abb","X..abc","X..abd"),
>> stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
>>  x$nam1 <- gsub("X\\.+",'', x$nam1)
>> x
>   nam1
> 1   aba
> 2 y.abb
> 3   abc
> 4   abd
>
>
>> (x)
>> str(x)
>>
>> Can't figure out how to apply strsplit in this situation - without
>> using a loop. I hope it's possible to do it without a loop - is it?
>
> --
>
> David Winsemius, MD
> West Hartford, CT
>
>



-- 
Dimitri Liakhovitski
Ninah Consulting
www.ninah.com