CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rregexgsub
j235
j235

Reputation: 150

How to clean brackets with gsub?

I made data scraping like table below, but I can't find solution to clean up this table vith GSUB. Namely I tried code like :

populous_table$Tax_GDP <- gsub("[:punct:]","",populous_table$Tax_GDP )

but this code can't clean brackets [] for number 7 Australia. Can anyone help me ?

1 Afghanistan  6.4
2 Albania 22.9
3 Algeria 7.7
4 Angola 5.7
5 Argentina 37.2
6 Armenia 22.0
7 Australia 34.3 [2]
8 Austria 43.4

Upvotes: 1

Views: 50

Answers (1)

Wiktor Stribiżew
Wiktor Stribiżew

Reputation: 626689

You may use

populous_table$Tax_GDP <- gsub("\\s*\\[\\d+]","", populous_table$Tax_GDP )

Or, if that [digits] substring is always at the end, add $:

populous_table$Tax_GDP <- gsub("\\s*\\[\\d+]$", "", populous_table$Tax_GDP )

The \s*\[\d+] pattern means

  • \s* - 0+ whitespaces
  • \[ - a [ char
  • \d+ - 1+ digits
  • ] - a ] char.

See R demo:

x <- c("1 Afghanistan  6.4", "2 Albania 22.9", "3 Algeria 7.7", "4 Angola 5.7", "5 Argentina 37.2", "Armenia 22.0", "7 Australia 34.3 [2]", "8 Austria 43.4")
gsub("\\s*\\[\\d+]", "", x) 
## => [1] "1 Afghanistan  6.4" "2 Albania 22.9"     "3 Algeria 7.7"     
      [4] "4 Angola 5.7"       "5 Argentina 37.2"   "Armenia 22.0"      
      [7] "7 Australia 34.3"   "8 Austria 43.4"

Upvotes: 2

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