CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rstringcharactergsub
user3385769
user3385769

Reputation: 161

substitute word separators with space

I just want to replace some word separators with a space. Any hints on this? Doesn't work after converting to character either. 

df <- data.frame(m = 1:3, n = c("one.one", "one.two", "one.three"))

> gsub(".", "\\1 \\2", df$n)
[1] "       "   "       "   "         "
> gsub(".", " ", df$n)
[1] "       "   "       "   "         "

Upvotes: 0

Views: 64

Answers (4)

Rich Scriven
Rich Scriven

Reputation: 99351

You don't need to use regex for one-to-one character translation. You can use chartr().

df$n <- chartr(".", " ", df$n)
df
#   m         n
# 1 1   one one
# 2 2   one two
# 3 3 one three

Upvotes: 4

Roland
Roland

Reputation: 132949

Set fixed = TRUE if you are looking for an exact match and don't need a regular expression.

gsub(".", " ", df$n, fixed = TRUE)
#[1] "one one"   "one two"   "one three"

That's also faster than using an appropriate regex for such a case.

Upvotes: 2

akrun
akrun

Reputation: 887571

You can try

gsub("[.]", " ", df$n)
#[1] "one one"   "one two"   "one three"

Upvotes: 2

Avinash Raj
Avinash Raj

Reputation: 174796

I suggest you to do like this,

gsub("\\.", " ", df$n)

OR

gsub("\\W", " ", df$n)

\\W matches any non-word character. \\W+ matches one or more non-word characters. Use \\W+ if necessary.

Upvotes: 1

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