try this: > x <- c("XXX184_YYY_ZZZ.dat", "YY123_YY_ZZ.dat") > sub("(^[[:alpha:]]+)[[:digit:]]+.*", "\\1 <file://0.0.0.1/>", x, perl=TRUE) [1] "XXX" "YY" >
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 2:27 PM, arnaud chozo <arnaud.ch...@gmail.com>wrote: > Hi, > > I need to select a substring from the filename of a file in a list. > I can find all the filenames in a directory by > > list.files(fn_dir) > > Each filename has the format (the following is an example because field > lengths are variable) > > XXX184_YYY_ZZZ.dat > > XXX: 2 or 3 alphabetic characters > 184: 3 numeric characters > ... > > I'd like to select the substring XXX which has variable length (from each > filename). I saw regular expressions help but still I can't figure out how > to do. > > > Thanks, > Arnaud Chozo > > [[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<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? [[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.