Reread the help for strsplit: ## Note that 'split' is a regexp! ## If you really want to split on '.', use unlist(strsplit("a.b.c", "\\.")) ## [1] "a" "b" "c" ## or unlist(strsplit("a.b.c", ".", fixed = TRUE))
For your example: > strsplit("a.b", "\\.") [[1]] [1] "a" "b" In other words, nothing is wrong, and strsplit() behaves as documented. Sarah On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Czerminski, Ryszard <ryszard.czermin...@astrazeneca.com> wrote: > Any ideas what is wrong? > >> strsplit("a.b", ".") # generates empty strings with split="." > [[1]] > [1] "" "" "" > >> strsplit("a b", " ") # seems to work fine with split=" ", and other > characters... > [[1]] > [1] "a" "b" >> > >> R.Version() > $platform > [1] "x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu" > $arch > [1] "x86_64" > $os > [1] "linux-gnu" > $system > [1] "x86_64, linux-gnu" > $status > [1] "" > $major > [1] "2" > $minor > [1] "14.1" > $year > [1] "2011" > $month > [1] "12" > $day > [1] "22" > $`svn rev` > [1] "57956" > $language > [1] "R" > $version.string > [1] "R version 2.14.1 (2011-12-22)" > > Best regards, > Ryszard > > -- Sarah Goslee http://www.functionaldiversity.org ______________________________________________ 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.