[R] splitting a vector of strings

[Ben Tupper]

Hi,

I'm not sure about the more generalized solution, but how about this for a start.


x <- c("a;b;c", "d;e", "foo;g;h;i")
x
#[1] "a;b;c"     "d;e"       "foo;g;h;i"

sapply(strsplit(x, ";",fixed = TRUE), '[',1)
#[1] "a"   "d"   "foo"

If you want elegance then I suggest you take a look at the stringr package. 

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/stringr/index.html

Cheers,
Ben


> On Jul 21, 2016, at 7:54 AM, Eric Elguero <Eric.Elguero at ird.fr> wrote:
> 
> Hi everybody,
> 
> I have a vector of character strings.
> Each string has the same pattern and I want
> to split them in pieces and get a vector made
> of the first pieces of each string.
> 
> The problem is that strsplit returns a list.
> 
> All I found is
> 
> uu<- matrix(unlist(strsplit(x,";")),ncol=3,byrow=T)[,1]
> 
> where x is the vector ";" is the delimiting character
> and I know that each string will be cut in 3 pieces.
> 
> That works for my problem but I would prefer a
> more elegant solution. Besides, it would not
> work if all the string didn't have the same
> number of pieces.
> 
> does someone have a better solution?
> 
> sorry if that topic was discussed recently.
> There is too much traffic on the r-help list,
> I cannot catch up.
> 
> -- 
> Eric Elguero
> ------------
> MIVEGEC. - UMR (CNRS/IRD/UM) 5290
> Maladies Infectieuses et Vecteurs, Génétique, Evolution et Contrôle
> Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)
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Ben Tupper
Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
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