[R] Simple regex problem

[(Ted Harding)]

On 10-May-08 16:49:20, John Kane wrote:
> I am cleaning up some character data to convert to
> dates using chron. The regex that I am using work fine
> but there should be a better way to do this. Can
> anyone suggest a cleaner bit of code than the gsub,
> sub approach? Thanks
> 
>#Test Run on dates.
> xx <- c("May  1, 2007",
> "May  2, 2007",
> "May  3, 2007",
> "May  4, 2007",
> "May  5, 2007",
> "May  6, 2007",
> "May  7, 2007",
> "May  8, 2007",
> "May  9, 2007",
> "May 10, 2007",
> "May 11, 2007",
> "May 12, 2007")
> yy <- gsub(" +", "/", xx) ; yy
> zz <- sub(",", "", yy) ; zz

You can do it in one stroke with
gsub(",*[ ]+", "/", xx)
 [1] "May/1/2007"  "May/2/2007"  "May/3/2007"  "May/4/2007"
 [5] "May/5/2007"  "May/6/2007"  "May/7/2007"  "May/8/2007" 
 [9] "May/9/2007"  "May/10/2007" "May/11/2007" "May/12/2007"

> library(chron)
> ttdates <- chron(zz, format = c(dates = "mon/d/y"))

Best wishes,
Ted

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Date: 10-May-08                                       Time: 18:14:33
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