[R] Find String Between Characters

[William Dunlap]

It looks like you can get the text of the document
with
  as(mmm[[1]], "character")
and you can use grep, strsplit, gsub, etc. on that text.

Look at the functions in the XML pacakge for ways
to use the XML structure of the data instead of pattern
matching to extract meaningful parts of the document.

class?HTMLInternalDocument

Bill Dunlap
Spotfire, TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Sparks, John James
> Sent: Saturday, May 14, 2011 7:14 PM
> To: jim holtman
> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Find String Between Characters
> 
> Hi Jim,
> 
> Thanks for your note.
> 
> Unfortunately, when I attempt your solution in my exact 
> setting, I get a
> weird and slightly different answer.
> 
> First, let me be more clear.  What I am attempting to do is 
> pull the CIK
> number out of the information from the web page itself after 
> it has loaded
> to R (this may not be optimal, but I am new at this), not from the web
> page reference (as you have done).
> 
> So, when I execute the following as per your suggestion:
> 
> require(scrapeR)
> mmm<-scrape(url="http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?actio
n=getcompany&CIK=0000320193&owner=exclude&count=40")
> 
> num <- sub("^.*CIK=([0-9]+).*", "\\1", mmm)
> 
> I get
> [1] "<pointer: 0x00000000001265c0>"
> 
> Is this just a hex representation of the same number, or is 
> something else
> going on here?
> 
> Comments from any and all would be much appreciated.
> 
> --John J. Sparks, Ph.D.
> 
> On Sat, May 14, 2011 7:57 pm, jim holtman wrote:
> > Is this what you want:
> >
> >> 
> mmm<-"http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompan
y&CIK=0000320193&owner=exclude&count=40"
> >> num <- sub("^.*CIK=([0-9]+).*", "\\1", mmm)
> >> num
> > [1] "0000320193"
> >>
> >
> >
> > On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 8:20 PM, Sparks, John James 
> <jspark4 at uic.edu>
> > wrote:
> >> Dear R Helpers,
> >>
> >> I am trying to isolate a set of characters between two 
> other characters
> >> in
> >> a long string file.  I tried some of the examples on the R 
> help pages
> >> and
> >> elsewhere, but I am not able to get it.  Your help would be much
> >> appreciated.
> >>
> >> require(scrapeR)
> >> 
> mmm<-scrape(url="http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?actio
n=getcompany&CIK=0000320193&owner=exclude&count=40")
> >> str(mmm)
> >>
> >> I want to get the number 0000320193 that is between the 
> CIK= and the &.
> >>  I
> >> have tried
> >>
> >> g <- grep( "CIK=|&", mmm )
> >> and
> >> temp<-grep(mmm,\CIK=\&)
> >>
> >> and variations on these themes, but all won't run or come 
> bask as an
> >> empty
> >> object.  How can I grab this number?
> >>
> >> Best wishes,
> >> --John J. Sparks, Ph.D.
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________
> >> 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.
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Jim Holtman
> > Data Munger Guru
> >
> > What is the problem that you are trying to solve?
> >
> >
> 
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>