Thank you all for the useful responses. Problem solved! J On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 12:14 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote: > On 22/10/2008 5:02 PM, jonas garcia wrote: > >> Dear list: >> >> >> >> I have the following problem: From a vector like this: >> >> vec<- c("mud_1999_area_A", "gravel_2004_area_F") >> >> >> >> I would like to get the year in a separate vector, such >> >> >> >> y<- c("1999", "2004") >> >> >> >> I´ve been looking to grep() but I'm not sure how to do this. >> > > You want sub() or gsub(). For example, if the year is always the only > digits in the string, then > > gsub("[^[:digit:]]", "", vec) > > (which says delete all non-digits). > > Duncan Murdoch > [[alternative HTML version deleted]]