CODEWITHSUNDEEP
r
Arun
Arun

Reputation: 625

R:: Substring a character till a numeric value is found

I want to substring the below words in R till it finds a numeric character.

BARCLAYS BANK PLC 6.860

The answer should be 

BARCLAYS BANK PLC

I tired to used substr but I am not sure how to remove the numeric variables.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 348

Answers (1)

akrun
akrun

Reputation: 887481

We can use sub to match one or more space (\\s+) followed by numbers till the end of the string ($) (this is based on the example provided), and replace by ''.

sub("\\s+[0-9.]+$", '', str1)
#[1] "BARCLAYS BANK PLC" "US TREASURY"       "NEW BRUNSWICK"

Or using the OP's description (to keep only characters till a numeric character is found), we match all non-numeric characters from the beginning of the string (^), keep it in a capture group and replace with the backreference (\\1).

sub("^([^0-9.]+)\\s+.*", '\\1', str1)
#[1] "BARCLAYS BANK PLC" "US TREASURY"       "NEW BRUNSWICK"

data

str1 <- c("BARCLAYS BANK PLC 6.860", "US TREASURY 2.500", 
      "NEW BRUNSWICK 4.800")

Upvotes: 1

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