[R] Splitting a character vector.

[Rui Barradas]

Hello,

Try the following.

open.par <- " \\("  # with a blank before '('
close.par <- "\\)"
result <- strsplit(sub(close.par, "", dd1), open.par)


Why the two '\\'? Because '(' is a meta-character so it must be escaped. 
But '\' is a meta character so it must also be escaped.

Then choose the right way to separate the two, maybe something like

ix <- rep(c(TRUE, FALSE), length(result))
unlist(result)[ix]
unlist(result)[!ix]


Hope this helps,

Rui Barradas

Em 07-07-2012 22:37, John Kane escreveu:
> I am lousy at simple regex and I have not found a solution to a simple problem.
>
> I have a vector with some character values that I want to split.
> Sample data
> dd1  <-  c( "XXY (mat harry)","XXY (jim bob)", "CAMP (joe blow)", "ALP (max jack)")
>
> Desired result
> dd2  <-  data.frame( xx = c("XXY", "XXY", "CAMP", "ALP"), yy = c("mat harry", "jim bob" , "joe blow", "max jack"))
>
> I thought I should be able to split the characters with strsplit but either I am misunderstanding the function or don't know how to escape a "(" properly in an effort to at least get   "XXY" "(mat harry)"
>
> Any pointers would be appreciated
> Thanks
> John Kane
> Kingston ON Canada
>
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