Try this:

gsub("(.*)[ \n]\\w{3}/\\d{2}", "\\1", avprix$DESCRIPTION)

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 9:30 AM, arnaud Gaboury <arnaud.gaboury@gmail.com>wrote:

> TY so much david. We are getting close. But I need to keep "USD" in my
> object name (i.e "STANDARD LEAD USD")
>
>
>
> ***************************
> Arnaud Gaboury
> Mobile: +41 79 392 79 56
> BBM: 255B488F
> ***************************
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: David Winsemius [mailto:dwinsemius@comcast.net]
> > Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 2:25 PM
> > To: arnaud Gaboury
> > Cc: r-help@r-project.org
> > Subject: Re: [R] data frame manipulation and regex
> >
> >
> > On Apr 28, 2010, at 5:14 AM, arnaud Gaboury wrote:
> >
> > > Dear group,
> > >
> > > Here is my data.frame :
> > >
> > > avprix <-
> > > structure(list(DESCRIPTION = c("CORN Jul/10", "CORN May/10",
> > > "ROBUSTA COFFEE (10) Jul/10", "SOYBEANS Jul/10", "SPCL HIGH GRADE
> > > ZINC USD
> > > Jul/10",
> > > "STANDARD LEAD USD Jul/10"), prix = c(-1.5, -1082, 11084, 1983.5,
> > > -2464, -118), quantity = c(0, -3, 8, 2, -1, 0)), .Names =
> > > c("DESCRIPTION",
> > > "prix", "quantity"), row.names = c(NA, -6L), class = "data.frame")
> > >
> > >> avprix
> > >                      DESCRIPTION    prix quantity
> > > 1                     CORN Jul/10    -1.5        0
> > > 2                     CORN May/10 -1082.0       -3
> > > 3      ROBUSTA COFFEE (10) Jul/10 11084.0        8
> > > 4                 SOYBEANS Jul/10  1983.5        2
> > > 5 SPCL HIGH GRADE ZINC USD Jul/10 -2464.0       -1
> > > 6        STANDARD LEAD USD Jul/10  -118.0        0
> > >
> > > I need to remove the date (i.e. Jul/10 in this example) for each
> > > element of
> > > the DESCRIPTION column that contains the USD symbol. I am trying to
> > > do this
> > > using regular expressions, but must admit I am going nowhere.
> > > My elements in the DESCRIPTION column and the dates can change every
> > > day.
> >
> > This searches for the pattern USD and then replaces any three
> > characters , forward-slash, any two characters:
> >  > sub("USD+.*(.../..)", "", avprix$DESCRIPTION)
> > [1] "CORN Jul/10"                "CORN May/10"                "ROBUSTA
> > COFFEE (10) Jul/10"
> > [4] "SOYBEANS Jul/10"            "SPCL HIGH GRADE ZINC "
> > "STANDARD LEAD "
> >
> > This tightens up the matching by requiring that that the characters
> > after the slash be digits:
> >
> >  > sub("USD+.*(.../\\d{2})", "", avprix$DESCRIPTION)
> > [1] "CORN Jul/10"                "CORN May/10"                "ROBUSTA
> > COFFEE (10) Jul/10"
> > [4] "SOYBEANS Jul/10"            "SPCL HIGH GRADE ZINC "
> > "STANDARD LEAD "
> >
> > -- David.
> >
> >
> >  >
> > >
> > > TY for any help.
> > >
> > > ______________________________________________
> > > R-help@r-project.org mailing list
> > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> > > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-
> > guide.html
> > > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> >
> > David Winsemius, MD
> > West Hartford, CT
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>



-- 
Henrique Dallazuanna
Curitiba-Paraná-Brasil
25° 25' 40" S 49° 16' 22" O

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