Hello, thanks again for this nice solution using sub and regular expressions! However, in real life I have to overwrite more than two positions with blanks (say 50 or so), so I was trying to modify this in the following way:
> s <- c("ab34cd78e", "fg3 hi78j") # your suggestion (works perfectly for the simple case): > sub("^(..)..(..)..", "\\1 \\2 ", s) [1] "ab cd e" "fg hi j" # gereralizing the pattern (works as well): > sub("^(.{2}).{2}(.{2}).{2}", "\\1 \\2 ", s) [1] "ab cd e" "fg hi j" # generalizing the replacement (doesn't work): > sub("^(.{2}).{2}(.{2}).{2}", "\\1 {2}\\2 {2}", s) [1] "ab {2}cd {2}e" "fg {2}hi {2}j" Apparently, " {2}" ist not interpreted as a string with two blanks (" ") in the replacement part, so something is wrong in my expression there. I just can't figure out what... Kind regards Heinrich. > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- > Von: Gabor Grothendieck [mailto:ggrothendi...@gmail.com] > Gesendet: Donnerstag, 28. Oktober 2010 13:40 > An: RINNER Heinrich > Cc: r-h...@stat.math.ethz.ch > Betreff: Re: [R] replace text at certain positions in a file > > > On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 5:26 AM, RINNER Heinrich > <heinrich.rin...@tirol.gv.at> wrote: > > Hello, > > > > I am working with R version 2.10.1 under windows. > > In a text file, I need to replace all characters at certain > column positions with blanks. > > For example, say the file contains two lines and looks like this: > > > > ab34cd78e > > fg3 hi78j > > > > I'd like to replace everything at positions 3-4 and 7-8 > with blanks, so the output should be: > > > > ab cd e > > fg hi j > > > > [I'm not sure if this is really an R question(?), solutions > outside of R - maybe via shell() or so - are welcome!] > > > > Try this: > > > s <- c("ab34cd78e", "fg3 hi78j") > > sub("^(..)..(..)..", "\\1 \\2 ", s) > [1] "ab cd e" "fg hi j" > > > -- > Statistics & Software Consulting > GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc. > tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP > email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com > ______________________________________________ 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.