Hi Jim, Thanks for your note.
Unfortunately, when I attempt your solution in my exact setting, I get a weird and slightly different answer. First, let me be more clear. What I am attempting to do is pull the CIK number out of the information from the web page itself after it has loaded to R (this may not be optimal, but I am new at this), not from the web page reference (as you have done). So, when I execute the following as per your suggestion: require(scrapeR) mmm<-scrape(url="http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000320193&owner=exclude&count=40") num <- sub("^.*CIK=([0-9]+).*", "\\1", mmm) I get [1] "<pointer: 0x00000000001265c0>" Is this just a hex representation of the same number, or is something else going on here? Comments from any and all would be much appreciated. --John J. Sparks, Ph.D. On Sat, May 14, 2011 7:57 pm, jim holtman wrote: > Is this what you want: > >> mmm<-"http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000320193&owner=exclude&count=40" >> num <- sub("^.*CIK=([0-9]+).*", "\\1", mmm) >> num > [1] "0000320193" >> > > > On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 8:20 PM, Sparks, John James <jspa...@uic.edu> > wrote: >> Dear R Helpers, >> >> I am trying to isolate a set of characters between two other characters >> in >> a long string file. I tried some of the examples on the R help pages >> and >> elsewhere, but I am not able to get it. Your help would be much >> appreciated. >> >> require(scrapeR) >> mmm<-scrape(url="http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000320193&owner=exclude&count=40") >> str(mmm) >> >> I want to get the number 0000320193 that is between the CIK= and the &. >> I >> have tried >> >> g <- grep( "CIK=|&", mmm ) >> and >> temp<-grep(mmm,\CIK=\&) >> >> and variations on these themes, but all won't run or come bask as an >> empty >> object. How can I grab this number? >> >> Best wishes, >> --John J. Sparks, Ph.D. >> >> ______________________________________________ >> 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. >> > > > > -- > Jim Holtman > Data Munger Guru > > What is the problem that you are trying to solve? > > ______________________________________________ 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.