On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 3:28 PM, Susanta Mohapatra <mohapatra.susa...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > I am working with a dataset for sometime and I need some help in parsing > some data. > > There is a column called "Duration" which has data like following: > > 2 minutes => 120 > 2 min => 120 > 10 seconds =>10 > 2 hrs =>7200 > 2-3 minutes => 150 or 120 > 5 minutes (when i arrived => 300 > Flyby approx 20 sec. => 20 > felt like 10 mins but tim => 600 > > I need to convert them to numerics as given. Any help in this regard will be > highly appreciated.
Assuming that "convert to numerics as given" means creating a list of numeric vectors, one per row. # sample input x <- c("2 minutes => 120", "2 min => 120", "10 seconds =>10", "2 hrs =>7200", " 2-3 minutes => 150 or 120", "5 minutes (when i arrived => 300", "Flyby approx 20 sec. => 20", "felt like 10 mins but tim => 600") library(gsubfn) out <- strapply(x, "\\d+", as.numeric) The result looks like this: > str(out) List of 8 $ : num [1:2] 2 120 $ : num [1:2] 2 120 $ : num [1:2] 10 10 $ : num [1:2] 2 7200 $ : num [1:4] 2 3 150 120 $ : num [1:2] 5 300 $ : num [1:2] 20 20 $ : num [1:2] 10 600 -- Statistics & Software Consulting GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc. tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com ______________________________________________ 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.