... and if anyone cares, here's a way to do it using vectorization (no loops) by working only on the subvector containing bracketed text and using the brackets to break up the strings into 3 separate pieces, replacing the commas in the middle piece with dashes, and then reassembling. Quite clumsy, so a better solution is still needed, but here it is:
txt <-c("Sam, [HadoopAnalyst, DBA, Developer], R46443 ","Jan, DBA, R101", "Mary, [Stats, Designer, R], t14") wh <- grep("\\[.+\\]",txt) txt1 <- sub("(.+), *\\[.+","\\1",txt[wh]) ## before "[" txt2 <- gsub(" *, *","-",sub(".+(\\[.+\\]).+","\\1",txt[wh])) ## bracketed part txt3 <- sub(".*\\], *(.+?) *$","\\1",txt[wh]) ## after "]" txt[wh]<- paste(txt1, txt2, txt3, sep = ", ") > txt [1] "Sam, [HadoopAnalyst-DBA-Developer], R46443" [2] "Jan, DBA, R101" [3] "Mary, [Stats-Designer-R], t14" Bert Gunter "The trouble with having an open mind is that people keep coming along and sticking things into it." -- Opus (aka Berkeley Breathed in his "Bloom County" comic strip ) On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 10:35 AM Bert Gunter <bgunter.4...@gmail.com> wrote: > ... and here's another perhaps simpler, perhaps more efficient (??) way of > doing it using strsplit().Note that it uses the fixed field position, 2, of > the bracketed roles. Adjust as needed. > > A better solution would be a regex that avoids the loops (here, the > sapply) altogether, but I don't know how to do this. Maybe someone cleverer > will offer such a solution. > > txt <-c("Sam, [HadoopAnalyst, DBA, Developer], R46443 ","Jan, DBA, R101", > "Mary, [Stats, Designer, R], t14") > > wh <- grep("\\[.+\\]", txt) > spl <- strsplit(txt[wh], "\\[|\\]") > txt[wh] <- sapply(spl, function(y) > paste0(y[1], gsub(" *, *","-", y[2]), y[-(1:2)])) > > > txt > [1] "Sam, HadoopAnalyst-DBA-Developer, R46443 " > [2] "Jan, DBA, R101" > [3] "Mary, Stats-Designer-R, t14" > > Bert Gunter > > "The trouble with having an open mind is that people keep coming along and > sticking things into it." > -- Opus (aka Berkeley Breathed in his "Bloom County" comic strip ) > > > On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 9:55 AM Bert Gunter <bgunter.4...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> (Note: This follows an earlier mistaken reply just to Duncan) >> >> Multiple "amens!" to Duncan's comments... >> >> However: >> >> Here is a start at my interpretation of how to do what you want. Note >> first that your "example" listed 4 fields in the line, but you showed only >> 3. I modified your example for 3 text fields, only one of which has >> brackets ([...]) in it I assume. Here is a little example of how to use >> regex's to replace the commas within the brackets by "-", which would >> presumably then allow you to easily convert the text into a data frame e.g. >> using textConnection() and read.csv. Obviously, if this is not what you >> meant, read no further. >> >> ##Example >> txt <-c("Sam, [HadoopAnalyst, DBA, Developer], R46443 ","Jan, DBA, R101", >> "Mary, [Stats, Designer, R], t14") >> >> wh <- grep("\\[.+\\]",txt) ## which records need to be modified? >> fixup <- gsub(" *, *","-",sub(".+(\\[.+\\]).+","\\1",txt[wh])) ## >> bracketed expressions, changing "," to "-" >> >> ## Unfortunately, the "replacement" argument in sub() is not vectorized, >> se we need a loop: >> >> for(i in wh) txt[wh[i]] <- sub("\\[.+\\]",fixup[i],txt[wh[i]]) ## replace >> original bracketed text with fixed up bracketed text >> >> > txt >> [1] "Sam, [HadoopAnalyst-DBA-Developer], R46443 " >> [2] "Jan, DBA, R101" >> [3] "Mary, [HadoopAnalyst-DBA-Developer], t14" >> >> >> Bert Gunter >> >> "The trouble with having an open mind is that people keep coming along >> and sticking things into it." >> -- Opus (aka Berkeley Breathed in his "Bloom County" comic strip ) >> >> >> On Sun, Apr 7, 2019 at 9:00 AM Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> On 06/04/2019 10:03 a.m., Amit Govil wrote: >>> > Hi, >>> > >>> > I have a bunch of csv files to read in R. I'm unable to read them >>> correctly >>> > because in some of the files, there is a column ("Role") which has >>> comma in >>> > the values. >>> > >>> > Sample data: >>> > >>> > User, Role, Rule, GAPId >>> > Sam, [HadoopAnalyst, DBA, Developer], R46443 >>> > >>> > I'm trying to play with the below code but it doesnt work: >>> >>> Since you didn't give a reproducible example, you should at least say >>> what "doesn't work" means. >>> >>> But here's some general advice: if you want to debug code, don't write >>> huge expressions like the chain of functions below, put things in >>> temporary variables and make sure you get what you were expecting at >>> each stage. >>> >>> Instead of >>> > >>> > files <- list.files(pattern='.*REDUNDANT(.*).csv$') >>> > >>> > tbl <- sapply(files, function(f) { >>> > gsub('\\[|\\]', '"', readLines(f)) %>% >>> > read.csv(text = ., check.names = FALSE) >>> > }) %>% >>> > bind_rows(.id = "id") %>% >>> > select(id, User, Rule) %>% >>> > distinct() >>> >>> try >>> >>> >>> files <- list.files(pattern='.*REDUNDANT(.*).csv$') >>> >>> tmp1 <- sapply(files, function(f) { >>> gsub('\\[|\\]', '"', readLines(f)) %>% >>> read.csv(text = ., check.names = FALSE) >>> }) >>> >>> tmp2 <- tmp1 %>% bind_rows(.id = "id") >>> >>> tmp3 <- tmp2 %>% select(id, User, Rule) >>> >>> tbl <- tmp3 %>% distinct() >>> >>> (You don't need pipes here, but it will make it easier to put the giant >>> expression back together at the end.) >>> >>> Then look at tmp1, tmp2, tmp3 as well as tbl to see where things went >>> wrong. >>> >>> Duncan Murdoch >>> >>> ______________________________________________ >>> R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see >>> 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. >>> >> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.