[R] problem with sub()

[t_o_b_y]

Dear R users:



I want to convert some character vectors into numeric vectors.

> head(price)
[1] "15450 EUR" "7900 EUR"  "13800 EUR" "3990 EUR"  "4500 EUR" 
[6] "4250 EUR"

>head(mileage)
[1] "21000 km"  "119000 km" "36600 km"  "92000 km"  "140200 km"
[6] "90000 km"

in the first example I can use:

price <- sub(" EUR",  "",  price)

to get

"15450" "7900"  "13800" "3990"  "4500"  "4250"

but in the second example it doesn't work with

mileage <- sub(" km, "", mileage)


I found a solution online:
 sub("[[:blank:]]+$", "", x)

so I can solve it with two steps (eliminate first "km" then blanks)

but I'm wondering where the difference in my two examples is
why does it work with the first vector and why not with the second

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