Here is a solution using strapply from the gsubfn package: library(gsubfn) strapply(myexstrings, "(\\w+).*", backref = -1, simplify = c)
It matches the first string of word characters following by anything else and then returns the first backreference in each match, i.e. the portion within parentheses, simplifying it all into a character vector (rather than a list). On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 6:23 AM, Tom.O <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi R gurus > I have a matching problem that I cant solve. I have tried multiple solutions > and searched varius help-sites but I cant get it to work. > > This is the problem > myexstrings = c("*AAA.AA","BBB BB","*.CCC.","**dd- d") > > what I want do do is to remove any non-characters in the beginning and > everything else after the non-character symbol after the first set of > characters so that the string becomes: > > c("AAA","BBB","CCC","dd") > > > I can figure out the start, sub("^\\W*","", myexstrings,perl=T) will remove > the unwanted beginnings but then its the rest. > > And please no links to any helppages, I have been looking at most of them > for the last hour without any success. > > Thanks > Regards > Tom > > -- > View this message in context: > http://www.nabble.com/matching-problem-tp18152158p18152158.html > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.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. > ______________________________________________ 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.