[R] spliting first 10 words in a string

David Winsemius dwinsemius at comcast.net
Tue Nov 2 20:22:32 CET 2010 

On Nov 2, 2010, at 3:01 PM, Matevž Pavlič wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Thanks for all the help. I managed to do it with what Gaj suggested  
> (Excel :().
>
> The last solution from David is also freat i just don't undestand  
> why R  put the words in 14 columns and thre rows?

Because the maximum number of words was 14 and the fill argument was  
TRUE. There were three rows because there were three items in the  
supplied character vector.

> I would like it to put just the first 10 words in source field to 10  
> diefferent destiantion fields, but the same row. And so on...is that  
> possible?

I don't know what a destination field might be. Those are not R data  
types.

This would trim the extra columns (in this example set to those  
greater than 8) by adding a lot of "NULL"'s to the end of a colClasses  
specification .... at the expense of a warning message which can be  
ignored:

 > read.table(textConnection(words), fill=T, colClasses =  
c(rep("character", 8), rep("NULL", 30) ) , stringsAsFactors=FALSE )
    V1    V2    V3      V4    V5    V6    V7      V8
1   I  have     a columnn  with  text  that     has
2   I would  like      to split these words      in
3 but  just first     ten words    in   the string.
Warning message:
In read.table(textConnection(words), fill = T, colClasses =  
c(rep("character",  :
   cols = 14 != length(data) = 38


If you want to assign the first column to a variable then just:
 > first8 <- read.table(textConnection(words), fill=T, colClasses =  
c(rep("character", 8), rep("NULL", 30) ) , stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
 > var1 <- first8[[1]]
 > var1
[1] "I"   "I"   "but"

-- 
David.

>
> Thank you, m
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
> ] On Behalf Of David Winsemius
> Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2010 3:47 PM
> To: Gaj Vidmar
> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] spliting first 10 words in a string
>
>
> On Nov 2, 2010, at 6:24 AM, Gaj Vidmar wrote:
>
>> Though <forbidden> in this list, in Excel it's just (literally!)
>> five clicks
>> away!
>> (with the column in question selected)
>> Data -> Text to Columns -> Delimited -> tick Space -> Finish
>> Pa je! (~Voila in Slovenian)
>> (then import back to R, keeping only the first 10 columns if so
>> desired)
>
> You could do the same thing without needing to leave R. Just
> read.table( textConnection(..), header=FALSE, fill=TRUE)
>
>> read.table(textConnection(words), fill=T)
>    V1    V2    V3      V4    V5    V6    V7      V8       V9
> V10      V11   V12 V13 V14
> 1   I  have     a columnn  with  text  that     has    quite
> a      few words  in it.
> 2   I would  like      to split these words      in separate columns
> 3 but  just first     ten words    in   the string.       Is    that
> possible    in  R?
>
>>
>> Regards,
>> Assist. Prof. Gaj Vidmar, PhD
>> University Rehabilitattion Institute, Republic of Slovenia
>>
>> Irrelevant P.S. Long ago, before embarking on what eventually ended
>> mainly
>> in statistics,
>> I did two years of geology, so (and also because of knowing what the
>> poster's institute does)
>> I even kinda imagine what these data are.
>>
>> "Matev¾ Pavliè" <matevz.pavlic at gi-zrmk.si> wrote in message
>> news:AD5CA6183570B54F92AA45CE2619F9B9D96994 at gi-zrmk.si...
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I am sorry, will try to be more exact from now on...
>>>
>>> I have a data.frame  with a field called Opis. IT contains
>>> sentenses that
>>> I would like to split in words or fields in data.frame...when I say
>>> columns I mean as in Excel table. I would like to split "Opis" into
>>> ten
>>> fields from the first ten words in Opis field.
>>> Here is an example of my data.frame.
>>>
>>> 'data.frame':   22928 obs. of  12 variables:
>>> $ VrtinaID        : int  1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 ...
>>> $ ZapStev         : int  1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
>>> $ GlobinaOd       : num  0 0.8 9.2 10.1 0 0.9 2.6 4.9 6.8 7.3 ...
>>> $ GlobinaDo       : num  0.8 9.2 10.1 11 0.9 2.6 4.9 6.8 7.3 8.2 ...
>>> $ Opis            : Factor w/ 12754 levels "","(MIVKA) DROBEN  
>>> MELJAST
>>> PESEK, GOST, SIVORJAV",..: 2060 11588 2477 11660 7539 3182 7884
>>> 9123 2500
>>> 4756 ...
>>> $ ACklasifikacija : Factor w/ 290 levels "","(CL)","(CL)/(SC)",..:
>>> 154 125
>>> 101 101 NA 106 125 80 106 101 ...
>>> $ GeolNastOd      : num  0 0.8 9.2 10.1 0 0.9 2.6 4.9 6.8 7.3 ...
>>> $ GeolNastDo      : num  0.8 9.2 10.1 11 0.9 2.6 4.9 6.8 7.3 8.2 ...
>>> $ GeolNastOpis    : Factor w/ 113 levels "","B. M. S.",..: 56 53 53
>>> 53 56
>>> 53 53 53 53 53 ...
>>> $ NacinVrtanjaOd  : num  0e+00 1e+09 1e+09 1e+09 0e+00 ...
>>> $ NacinVrtanjaDo  : num  1.1e+01 1.0e+09 1.0e+09 1.0e+09 1.0e+01 ...
>>> $ NacinVrtanjaOpis: Factor w/ 43 levels "","H. N.","IZKOP",..: 26 1
>>> 1 1 26
>>> 1 1 1 1 1 ...
>>>
>>> Hope that explains better...
>>> Thank you, m
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: David Winsemius [mailto:dwinsemius at comcast.net]
>>> Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 10:13 PM
>>> To: Matev¾ Pavliè
>>> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
>>> Subject: Re: [R] spliting first 10 words in a string
>>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 1, 2010, at 4:39 PM, Matev¾ Pavliè wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I have a columnn with text that has quite a few words in it. I  
>>>> would
>>>> like to split these words in separate columns, but just first ten
>>>> words in the string. Is that possible in R?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Not sure what a column means to you. It's not a precisely defined R
>>> type or class. (And you are requested to offered a concrete example
>>> rather than making us guess.)
>>>
>>>> words <-"I have a columnn with text that has quite a few words in
>>> it. I would like to split these words in separate columns, but just
>>> first ten words in the string. Is that possible in R?"
>>>
>>>> strsplit(words, " ")[[1]][1:10]
>>> [1] "I"       "have"    "a"       "columnn" "with"    "text"
>>> "that"    "has"     "quite"   "a"
>>>
>>>
>>> Or if in a dataframe:
>>>
>>>> words <-c("I have a columnn with text that has quite a few words in
>>> it.",   "I would like to split these words in separate columns",  
>>> "but
>>> just first ten words in the string. Is that possible in R?")
>>>> worddf <- data.frame(words=words)
>>>
>>>> t(sapply(strsplit(worddf$words, " "), "[", 1:10) )
>>>    [,1]  [,2]    [,3]    [,4]      [,5]    [,6]    [,7]    [,
>>> 8]      [,9]       [,10]
>>> [1,] "I"   "have"  "a"     "columnn" "with"  "text"  "that"  "has"
>>> "quite"    "a"
>>> [2,] "I"   "would" "like"  "to"      "split" "these" "words" "in"
>>> "separate" "columns"
>>> [3,] "but" "just"  "first" "ten"     "words" "in"    "the"
>>> "string."
>>> "Is"       "that"
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> David Winsemius, MD
>>> West Hartford, CT
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>>
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> David Winsemius, MD
> West Hartford, CT
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT

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