Try
regexpr("\\.", "Female.Alabama") and gsub("\\.", ",", "Female.Alabama")
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>Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:46:45 -0400
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>Subject: [R] Regexpr with "."
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>I'm trying to use the regexpr function to locate the decimal in a character
>string. Regardless of the position of the decimal, the function returns 1.
>For example,
>
>> regexpr(".", "Female.Alabama")
>[1] 1
>attr(,"match.length")
>[1] 1
>
>In trying to figure out what was going on here, I tried the below command:
>
>> gsub(".", ",", "Female.Alabama")
>[1] ",,,,,,,,,,,,,,"
>
>It looks like R is treating every character in the string as if it were
>decimal. I didn't see anything in the help file about "." being some kind
>of special character. Any idea why R is treating a decimal this way in
>these functions? Any suggestions how to get around this?
>
>Thanks for any suggestions.
>
>-Trevor
>
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Jianhua Zhang
Department of Biostatistics
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
44 Binney Street
Boston, MA 02115-6084
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