On Aug 14, 2013, at 12:41 PM, Chris Stubben <stub...@lanl.gov> wrote:
> Is there an easy way to convert character strings with comma-separated
> numbers and ranges to a numeric vector?
>
> x<- "2,5-7,10,12-15"
>
> [1] 2 5 6 7 10 12 13 14 15
>
> Thanks,
> Chris
>
There is a general admonishment to not use the idiom eval(parse(text = ...))
which has become a 'fortune', however in this case:
x <- "2,5-7,10,12-15"
> eval(parse(text = paste("c(", gsub("\\-", ":", x), ")")))
[1] 2 5 6 7 10 12 13 14 15
The result of the inner use of gsub() is:
> gsub("\\-", ":", x)
[1] "2,5:7,10,12:15"
which converts the '-' to ':', which can then be parsed as a sequence operator.
The paste() creates:
> paste("c(", gsub("\\-", ":", x), ")")
[1] "c( 2,5:7,10,12:15 )"
which can then be evaluated as a single vector.
Regards,
Marc Schwartz
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