Hello,

What is the fastest way to do this? I has to be done quite a few times.
Basically I have sets of 3 numbers (as characters) and sets of 3 dashes and
I have to store them in named columns. The order of the sets and the column
name they fall under is important. The actual numbers and the pattern/order
of the sets should be considered random/unpredictable.

Sample data:
vec = c("1","2","3","-","-","-","4","5","6","1","2","3","-","-","-")
rep_vec = rep(vec,times=20)
nms = c("A","B","C","D")

I need to get this:
  A     B     C     D
"123" "---" "456" "123"
"---" "123" "---" "456"
"123" "---" "123" "---"
"456" "123" "---" "123"
"---" "456" "123" "---"

Note: a matrix of 4 columns and 5 rows of concatenated string sets.

Thanks!!

Ben

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