[R] Is it possible to get the first letter of a word?

[Marc Schwartz]

On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 16:42 +0200, Navarre Sabine wrote:
> Hi,
> I would to get the first letter of a word like:
> 
> > title_cat
>        TitleCat
> 1     Training
>  
> I would like T from Training!
> 
> Thnaks a lot for your help
>  
> Sabine


There are multiple approaches, but you need to be careful, since it
appears that your object is a factor. Thus you may need to convert to a
character vector first:

> title_cat <- factor("Training")

> substr(as.character(title_cat), 1, 1)
[1] "T"


Otherwise:

> title_cat <- "Training"

> substr(title_cat, 1, 1)
[1] "T"

See ?substr for more information.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz