This could be done in a single step using gsub() with back references in the
regex.
> gsub("^(.{3}).* (.{3}).*$", "\\1\\2", "Tom Cruise")
[1] "TomCru"
Regards,
Marc Schwartz
On Mar 13, 2013, at 9:21 AM, SH <empti...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What I want to do is to extrac three letters from first and last name
> and to combine them to make another column 'abb'. The column 'abb' is
> to be a my final product. I can make column 'abb' using 'paste'
> function once I have two parts from the first column 'name'.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve
>
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 10:17 AM, Jorge I Velez
> <jorgeivanve...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Try
>>
>> substr(tempdf$abb 4, 6)
>>
>> --JIV
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:15 AM, SH <empti...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Jorge,
>>>
>>> I gave me this result (below) since it defines starting from the forth
>>> letter and ending 6th letter from the first element.
>>>
>>>> substr(tempdf$name, 4, 6)
>>> [1] " Cr" "ad " "old"
>>>
>>> I would like to have letters from first and second elements if possible.
>>>
>>> Thanks for replying,
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 10:10 AM, Jorge I Velez
>>> <jorgeivanve...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Dear SH,
>>>>
>>>> Hmmm... what about
>>>>
>>>> substr(tempdf$name, 4, 6))
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> HTH,
>>>> Jorge.-
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:06 AM, SH <empti...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Dear list:
>>>>>
>>>>> I would like to extract three letters from first and second elements
>>>>> in one column and make a new column.
>>>>>
>>>>> For example below,
>>>>>
>>>>>> tempdf = read.table("clipboard", header=T, sep='\t')
>>>>>> tempdf
>>>>> name var1 var2 abb
>>>>> 1 Tom Cruiser 1 6 TomCru
>>>>> 2 Bread Pett 2 5 BrePet
>>>>> 3 Arnold Schwiezer 3 7 ArnSch
>>>>>> (p1 = substr(tempdf$name, 1, 3))
>>>>> [1] "Tom" "Bre" "Arn"
>>>>>
>>>>> I was able to extract three letters from first name, however, I don't
>>>>> know how to extract three letters from last name (i.e., 'Cru', 'Pet',
>>>>> and 'Sch'). Can anyone give me a suggestion? Many thanks in advance.
>>>>>
>>>>> Best,
>>>>>
>>>>> Steve
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