[R] Applying "toupper" to only portions of text strings

[Bert Gunter]

Cute!
I don't think your proposed strategy is all that complicated, but see
the gsubfn package for a one-liner. In particular, check out

http://code.google.com/p/gsubfn/

where there is an example for your almost exact task.

-- Bert

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Dennis Fisher <fisher at plessthan.com> wrote:
> Colleagues
>
> Assume that I have a vector containing some text strings, some of which contain a particular character.  I could like to apply "toupper" to the text before the character.  For example (in this case, "|" is the particular character):
>
> ORIGINAL:
>        TEXT    <- c("aaaa", "bbb|cc", "|ddd")
>
> AFTER APPLICATION OF toupper:
>        TEXT    <- c("AAAA", "BBB|cc", "|dddd")
>
> I could loop through each element, strsplit at the character, apply toupper to the first component, then paste each element together.  But, I hope that there is a simpler means to accomplish this.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Dennis
>
>
> Dennis Fisher MD
> P < (The "P Less Than" Company)
> Phone: 1-866-PLessThan (1-866-753-7784)
> Fax: 1-866-PLessThan (1-866-753-7784)
> www.PLessThan.com
>
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-- 
"Men by nature long to get on to the ultimate truths, and will often
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-- Maimonides (1135-1204)

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics
467-7374
http://devo.gene.com/groups/devo/depts/ncb/home.shtml