On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Fred G <bayespoker...@gmail.com> wrote: > Computer Friends, > > with the following example lines: > > [107] "98-610: Cell type: S; Surv(months): 6; STATUS(0=alive, 1=dead): 1" > > [108] "99-625: Cell type: S; Surv(months): 21; STATUS(0=alive, 1=dead): 1" > > i want to be able to isolate the number of months of survival for each row. > > is there a regular expression that can find the first instance of a ";", > delete everything in front of it-- and find the second instance of an ";" > and delete everything behind it? in python there is a function line.find(), > would be grateful to hear the R equiv; or, any other better alternatives to > get the number of months of survival stored as a variable. >
This extracts all the numeric fields: # sample data Lines <- c("98-610: Cell type: S; Surv(months): 6; STATUS(0=alive, 1=dead): 1", "99-625: Cell type: S; Surv(months): 21; STATUS(0=alive, 1=dead): 1") library(gsubfn) strapply(Lines, "(\\d+);", as.numeric, simplify = TRUE) # We can also get all numeric fields in case that is of interest: strapply(Lines, "\\d+", as.numeric, simplify = rbind) -- 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.