Hi Elisa, It seems also that there are spaces between the second '.' and the number (1901.11. 1).
You could do something like: Lines1<-readLines(textConnection("1901.11. 1 447.000 1901.11. 2 445.000 1901.11. 3 445.000 1924.11. 4 445.000 1924.11. 5 449.000 1924.11. 6 442.000 1924.11. 7 445.000 ")) gsub("(.*..*.)\\s+(.*\\s+.*)","\\1\\2",gsub("^ ","",Lines1[Lines1!=""])) #[1] "1901.11.1 447.000" "1901.11.2 445.000" "1901.11.3 445.000" #[4] "1924.11.4 445.000" "1924.11.5 449.000" "1924.11.6 442.000" #[7] "1924.11.7 445.000" read.table(text=gsub("(.*..*.)\\s+(.*\\s+.*)","\\1\\2",gsub("^ ","",Lines1[Lines1!=""])),sep="",header=FALSE,stringsAsFactors=FALSE) # V1 V2 #1 1901.11.1 447 #2 1901.11.2 445 #3 1901.11.3 445 #4 1924.11.4 445 #5 1924.11.5 449 #6 1924.11.6 442 #7 1924.11.7 445 #Using read.table directly also removes the spaces dat1<-read.table(text=" 1901.11. 1 447.000 1901.11. 2 445.000 1901.11. 3 445.000 1924.11. 4 445.000 1924.11. 5 449.000 1924.11. 6 442.000 1924.11. 7 445.000 ",sep="",header=FALSE,stringsAsFactors=FALSE) dat1 # V1 V2 V3 #1 1901.11. 1 447 #2 1901.11. 2 445 #3 1901.11. 3 445 #4 1924.11. 4 445 #5 1924.11. 5 449 #6 1924.11. 6 442 #7 1924.11. 7 445 ----- Original Message ----- From: eliza botto <eliza_bo...@hotmail.com> To: "r-help@r-project.org" <r-help@r-project.org> Cc: Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 11:41 AM Subject: [R] FORMAT EDITING Dear R users,[IF THE FORMAT OF MY EMAIL IS NOT CLEAR, I HAVE ATTACHED A TEXT FILE FOR A CLEAR VIEW] I would like to use the R output file in Fortran. my file Is exactly in the following format. ELISA/BOTTO wATER INN FROM 1900 11 1 TO 1996 12 31 1901.11. 1 447.000 1901.11. 2 445.000 1901.11. 3 445.000 1924.11. 4 445.000 1924.11. 5 449.000 1924.11. 6 442.000 1924.11. 7 445.000 so you can see that there is a single space, in between these lines and also a single space from left margin. i would like to keep the left margin space, but really like to eliminate the space between the lines so that i get an output text file which could look like ELISA/BOTTO wATER INN FROM 1900 11 1 TO 1996 12 31 1901.11. 1 447.000 1901.11. 2 445.000 1901.11. 3 445.000 1924.11. 4 445.000 1924.11. 5 449.000 1924.11. 6 442.000 1924.11. 7 445.000 As i am working in fortran i would really like to keep the said format.THANKS IN ADVANCE ELISA ______________________________________________ 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. ______________________________________________ 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.