Hi Robin! Does the following produce what you want mate?
### R START ### > text <- 'this sentence contains an * (i.e. an astrix).' > grep('\\*', text) [1] 1 ### R END ### Regards, Tony Breyal On 23 Nov, 08:41, Robin Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > I'm trying to determine if a string contains asterisks using the grep > function. I know that this is slightly difficult because * is a special > character in regular expressions and needs to be escaped. However, escaping > the * using \ doesn't work either: > > if(grep("\*", model)>0) #does the model have an interaction > { > do something... > > } > > produces the following error message: > > Error in grep("*", model) : invalid regular expression '*' > In addition: Warning messages: > 1: '\*' is an unrecognized escape in a character string > 2: unrecognized escape removed from "\*" > 3: In grep("*", model) : > regcomp error: 'Invalid preceding regular expression' > Execution halted > > Any ideas anyone? > Robin > -- > View this message in > context:http://www.nabble.com/grep-for-asterisks-%22*%22%27s-tp20644195p20644... > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > ______________________________________________ > [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing listhttps://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guidehttp://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.