CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rtidyversestringr
Edgar Zamora
Edgar Zamora

Reputation: 466

Splitting strings with different lengths

I have a dataset that contains Congressional members name followed by their state and district number. Ideally I would like to split the string into new columns containing the representatives name, state, and district #. I can successfully split one but since the strings are different lengths it will not match other strings. Below is a reproducable sample.

current_data <- tibble(
 names = c("Ralph Abraham La. 5", "Robert B. Aderholt Ala. 4", "Rick W. Allen Ga. 12", "Mark Amodei Nev. 2",
           "Kelly Armstrong N.D. 0", "Jodey Arrington Tex. 19"),
 party = c("R", "R", "R","R", "R", "R"),
 vote = c("N","N","N","N","N","N"))

Here is a sample of what I would like it to look like.

desired_data <- tibble(
 names = c("Ralph Abraham", "Robert B. Aderholt", "Rick W. Allen", "Mark Amodei",
        "Kelly Armstrong", "Jodey Arrington"),
 state = c("La.", "Ala.", "Ga.", "Nev.", "N.D.", "Tex."),
 district_num = c(5,4,12,2,0,19),
 party = c("R", "R", "R","R", "R", "R"),
 vote = c("N","N","N","N","N","N"))

Hope y'all can help me out. Thank you!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 50

Answers (1)

Onyambu
Onyambu

Reputation: 79338

current_data%>%
   separate(names,c("names","state","district"),"\\s(?=\\S+\\s+\\d)|\\s+(?=\\d)")

# A tibble: 6 x 5
  names              state district party vote 
  <chr>              <chr> <chr>    <chr> <chr>
1 Ralph Abraham      La.   5        R     N    
2 Robert B. Aderholt Ala.  4        R     N    
3 Rick W. Allen      Ga.   12       R     N    
4 Mark Amodei        Nev.  2        R     N    
5 Kelly Armstrong    N.D.  0        R     N    
6 Jodey Arrington    Tex.  19       R     N

Upvotes: 1

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