[R] Removing a space from a string

[Rasmus Liland]

On 2020-07-28 23:00 +0200, Rasmus Liland wrote:
| 
| Perhaps by using gregexpr to look for 
| dots, remove spaces from the substring until the first 
| finding, then pasting it back.
| 
| 	strings <- 
| 	c("STRING 01.  Remainder of the string.",
| 	  "STR ING 01.  Remainder of the string.",
| 	  "STRIN G 01.  Remainder of the string.")
| 	
| 	search <- gregexpr("\\.", strings)
| 	lens <- nchar(strings)
| 	FUN <- function(i, strings, search, lens) {
| 	  before.dot <- substr(strings[i], 1, search[[i]][1])
| 	  before.dot <- gsub(" ", "", before.dot)
| 	  after.dot <- substr(strings[i], search[[i]][1]+1, lens[i])
| 	  return(paste0(before.dot, after.dot))
| 	}
| 	simplify2array(parallel::mclapply(
| 	  X=1:length(strings),
| 	  FUN=FUN,
| 	  strings=strings,
| 	  search=search,
| 	  lens=lens))
| 
| yields
| 
| 	[1] "STRING01.  Remainder of the string."
| 	[2] "STRING01.  Remainder of the string."
| 	[3] "STRING01.  Remainder of the string."
| 
| Yes, I know, the space just before 01 
| also disappears ... 

I forgot about regexpr ... this is 
simpler I think:

	strings <- 
	c("STRING 01.  Remainder of the string.",
	  "STR ING 01.  Remainder of the string.",
	  "STRIN G 01.  Remainder of the string.")
	
	search <- regexpr("...\\.", strings)  # search for the first dot and three chars in front of it
	ml <- attr(search, "match.length")
	paste0(
	  gsub(" ", "", substr(strings, 1, search)),
	  substr(strings, search, search+ml-1),
	  substr(strings, search+ml, nchar(strings))
	)

/Rasmus

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