How about this: > myCharVec <- c("[the rain in spain]", "(the rain in spain)") > gsub('\\[.*\\]', '', myCharVec) [1] "" "(the rain in spain)" >
you had "*." when you should have ".*" On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Mark Kimpel<mwkim...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm having trouble achieving the results I want using a regular expression. > I want to eliminate all characters that fall within square brackets as well > as the brackets themselves, returning an "". I'm not sure if it's R's use of > double slash escapes or something else that is tripping me up. If I only use > one slash I get > 1: '\[' is an unrecognized escape in a character string > 2: '\]' is an unrecognized escape in a character string > 3: unrecognized escapes removed from "\[*.\]" > > Below is my self-contained code followed by sessionInfo(). > > Thanks in advance for your help. I'm going to be doing a lot of text mining > in the near future. I have an excellent O'Reilly book on regex's. What is > the best reference for R's special treatment of these animals? > Mark > > > myCharVec <- c("[the rain in spain]", "(the rain in spain)") > gsub('\\[*.\\]', '', myCharVec) > > #what I get > # [1] "[the rain in spai" "(the rain in spain)" > > #what I want > [1] "" "(the rain in spain)" > >> sessionInfo() > R version 2.10.0 Under development (unstable) (2009-08-12 r49193) > x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu > > locale: > [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC=C > [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8 LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8 > [5] LC_MONETARY=C LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8 > [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8 LC_NAME=C > [9] LC_ADDRESS=C LC_TELEPHONE=C > [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C > > attached base packages: > [1] stats graphics grDevices datasets utils methods base > > other attached packages: > [1] RWeka_0.3-20 tm_0.4 > > loaded via a namespace (and not attached): > [1] grid_2.10.0 rJava_0.6-3 slam_0.1-3 > > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > Mark W. Kimpel MD ** Neuroinformatics ** Dept. of Psychiatry > Indiana University School of Medicine > > 15032 Hunter Court, Westfield, IN 46074 > > (317) 490-5129 Work, & Mobile & VoiceMail > > "The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do." -- B. > F. Skinner > ****************************************************************** > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > 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. > -- Jim Holtman Cincinnati, OH +1 513 646 9390 What is the problem that you are trying to solve? ______________________________________________ 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.