[R] Trimming in R

[David Winsemius]

On Jul 7, 2010, at 9:23 AM, Andrew Leeser wrote:

> I am looking for a way to trim leading and trailing spaces in a  
> character
> string in R. For example:
>
> "       this is random text        "
>
> should become:
>
> "this is random text".
>
> I have a short function to perform this task as follows:
>
> trim <- function(str){
>        str <- sub("^ +", "", str)
>        str <- sub(" +$", "", str)
> }
>
> While this function does seem to work, I am curious if there's  
> anything built
> into R that I can use instead, as that would be preferable.

I have been using the trim function in package gdata. The code is  
quite similar to yours.

-- 

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT