[R] Is there a better way to parse strings than this?

[Hadley Wickham]

> I was trying strsplit(string,"\.\.\.") as per the suggestion in Venables
> and Ripleys book to "(use '\.' to match '.')", which is in the Regular
> expressions section.
>
> I noticed that in the suggestions sent to me people used:
> strsplit(test,"\\.\\.\\.")
>
>
> Could anyone please explain why I should have used "\\.\\.\\." rather than
> "\.\.\."?

Basically,

 * you want to match .
 * so the regular expression you need is \.
 * and the way you represent that in a string in R is \\.

Hadley

-- 
Assistant Professor / Dobelman Family Junior Chair
Department of Statistics / Rice University
http://had.co.nz/