I'm trying to use the regexpr function to locate the decimal in a character
string.  Regardless of the position of the decimal, the function returns 1.
For example,

> regexpr(".", "Female.Alabama")
[1] 1
attr(,"match.length")
[1] 1

In trying to figure out what was going on here, I tried the below command:

> gsub(".", ",", "Female.Alabama")
[1] ",,,,,,,,,,,,,,"

It looks like R is treating every character in the string as if it were
decimal.  I didn't see anything in the help file about "." being some kind
of special character.  Any idea why R is treating a decimal this way in
these functions?   Any suggestions how to get around this?

Thanks for any suggestions.

-Trevor
 


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