[R] split character string in matrix into character vector and numeric vector

[Kim Milferstedt]

Hello,

I've got a matrix consisting of one column with n rows. Each field in 
the matrix is filled with a character vector.

I would like to convert this matrix into a character vector containing 
the B03_MAH-type entries from the beginning of each row and a data.frame 
that contains the numeric data, but I am stuck.

I have tried to use textConnection with sep = "  " but since there is 
sometimes more than two spaces separating the entries, I obtain a result 
with columns full of NAs.

Then I tried sub() to replace the all multi-spaces to get only one space 
that separates each entry but that didn't work either.

Do you know a good way to convert this matrix?

Thanks already,

Kim

taxa.vec "B03_MAH     0.2115  0.2087  0.2087  0.2147  0.2115  0.2176" 
taxa.vec "F02_SSBH    0.2162  0.2191  0.2133  0.2130  0.2220  0.2158" 
taxa.vec "G04_MAH     0.2083  0.2111  0.2055  0.2115  0.2140  0.2087" 
taxa.vec "A04_MAH     0.2097  0.2126  0.2069  0.2065  0.2097  0.2037" 
taxa.vec "E03_MAH     0.2097  0.2069  0.2069  0.2130  0.2155  0.2101"