All great ideas. I tried strsplit first and it worked, but thanks everyone!
Best- LB On 9/25/07, Gabor Grothendieck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Perhaps you could clarify what the general rule is but assuming > that what you want is any word after a colon it can be done with > strapply in the gsubfn package like this: > > Lines <- c("Year Built: 1873 Gross Building Area: 578 sq ft", > "Total Rooms: 6 Living Area: 578 sq ft") > > library(gsubfn) > strapply(Lines, ": *(\\w+)", backref = -1) > > # or if each line has same number of returned words > strapply(Lines, ": *(\\w+)", backref = -1, simplify = rbind) > > This matches a colon (:) followed by zero or more spaces ( *) > followed by a word ((\\w+)) and backref= - 1 causes it to return > only the first backreference (i..e. the portion within parentheses) > but not the match itself. > > On 9/25/07, lucy b <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Dear List, > > > > I have an ascii text file with data I'd like to extract. Example: > > > > Year Built: 1873 Gross Building Area: 578 sq ft > > Total Rooms: 6 Living Area: 578 sq ft > > > > There is a lot of data I'd like to ignore in each record, so I'm > > hoping there is a way to use strings as delimiters to get the data I > > want (e.g. tell R to take data between "Built:" and "Gross" - > > incidentally, not always numeric). I think an ugly way would be to > > start at the end of each record and use a substitution expression to > > chip away at it, but I'm afraid it will take forever to run. Is there > > a way to use strings as delimiters in an expression? > > > > Thanks in advance for ideas. > > > > LB > > > > ______________________________________________ > > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > > > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.