[R] Replacing Period in String

[Petr Savicky]

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 11:49:05PM -0500, Sparks, John James wrote:
> Dear R Users,
> 
> I am working with gsub for the first time.  I am trying to remove some
> characters from a string.  I have hit the problem where the period is the
> shorthand for 'everything' in the R language when what I want to remove is
> the actual periods.  In the example below, I simply want to remove the
> periods as I have removed the comma, but instead the complete string is
> wiped out.  I would appreciate it if someone could let me know how I
> communicate that I want to remove the period verbatim to R.
> 
> Many thanks.
> --John Sparks
> 
> > txt="This is a test. However, it is only a test."
> > txt2<-gsub(",","",txt)
> > txt2
> [1] "This is a test. However it is only a test."
> > txt3<-gsub(".","",txt)
> > txt3
> [1] ""

In order to force a "." to be interpreted literally, it is
possible to use "\\." as follows

  gsub("\\.","",txt)
  [1] "This is a test However, it is only a test"

Petr Savicky.