[R] Please assist -- Unable to remove '-' character from char vector--

[Sunny Singha]

Thank you Jim,
The code did assist me to get the what I needed.
Also, I learnt that there are different types of dashes
(en-dash/em-dash/hyphen) as explained on this site :
http://www.punctuationmatters.com/hyphen-dash-n-dash-and-m-dash/

I achieved it by executing below command after going through this page
on stackoverflow:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9223795/how-to-correctly-deal-with-escaped-unicode-characters-in-r-e-g-the-em-dash

splitends<-sapply(end,strsplit,"-|\u2013|,")

where '\u2013' is, i guess, the unicode for en-dash/em-dash character
in the ranges values.
I had scrapped the HTML table from this web page :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Heritage_in_Danger
and range values does have en-dash characters.

For now the issue is resolved but how does one capture values similar
to  '\u2013' for other possible special cases to be specified in the
regex ?

Regards,
Sunny Singha.


On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 12:39 PM, Jim Lemon <drjimlemon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Sunny,
> Try this:
>
> # notice that I have replaced the fancy hyphens with real hyphens
> end<-c("2001-","1992-","2013-","2013-","2013-","2013-",
>  "1993-2007","2010-","2012-","1984-1992","1996-","2015-")
> splitends<-sapply(end,strsplit,"-")
> last_bit(x) return(x[length(x)])
> sapply(splitends,last_bit)
>
> Jim
>
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 4:35 PM, Sunny Singha
> <sunnysingha.analytics at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I have a char vector with year values. Some cells have single year
>> value '2001-' and some have range like 1996-2007.
>> I need to remove hyphen character '-' from all the values within the
>> character vector named as 'end'. After removing the hyphen I need to
>> get the last
>> number from the cells where there are year range values i.e if the
>> cell has range 1996-2007, the code should return me 2007.
>>
>> How could I get this done?
>>
>>  Below are the values within this char vector:
>>
>>> end
>>  [1] "2001-"            "1992-"            "2013-"            "2013-"
>>           "2013-"            "2013-"
>>  [7] "2003-"            "2010-"            "2009-"            "1986-"
>>           "2012-"            "2003-"
>> [13] "2005-"            "2013-"            "2003-"            "2013-"
>>           "1993–2007, 2010-" "2012-"
>> [19] "1984–1992, 1996-" "2015-"            "2009-"            "2000-"
>>           "2005-"            "1997-"
>> [25] "2012-"            "1997-"            "2002-"            "2006-"
>>           "1992-"            "2007-"
>> [31] "1997-"            "1982-"            "2015-"            "2015-"
>>           "2010-"            "1996–2007, 2011-"
>> [37] "2004-"            "1999-"            "2007-"            "1996-"
>>           "2013-"            "2012-"
>> [43] "2012-"            "2010-"            "2011-"            "1994-"
>>           "2014-"
>>
>> I tried below command--> gsub('[-|,]', '', end)
>> This did remove all the hyphen character but not from cells having
>> range year values.Below is the result after executing above command:
>> As you see hypphen character is removed from single values but not
>> from ranges. Please guide.
>>
>>> gsub('[-|,]', '', end)
>>  [1] "2001"           "1992"           "2013"           "2013"
>>   "2013"           "2013"           "2003"
>>  [8] "2010"           "2009"           "1986"           "2012"
>>   "2003"           "2005"           "2013"
>> [15] "2003"           "2013"           "1993–2007 2010" "2012"
>>   "1984–1992 1996" "2015"           "2009"
>> [22] "2000"           "2005"           "1997"           "2012"
>>   "1997"           "2002"           "2006"
>> [29] "1992"           "2007"           "1997"           "1982"
>>   "2015"           "2015"           "2010"
>> [36] "1996–2007 2011" "2004"           "1999"           "2007"
>>   "1996"           "2013"           "2012"
>> [43] "2012"           "2010"           "2011"           "1994"
>>   "2014"
>>
>> Regards,
>> Sunny Singha
>>
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