R help - Oct 2006 - processing strings in R

Dear R cracks, 
  I need to process data in R which consist of strings like
   
  AAABAVVABNN
  ABVVNNAA
   
  What I would like to know is whether there are commands that deliver
  -the length of a string
  -one specified character of a string (e.g. the 3rd letter)
  -that allow to concatenate characters to a string again
   
  Can anyone help me?
   
  Thanks a lot!
    Florian Menzel

 		
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Florian Menzel wrote:
> Dear R cracks, 
  We prefer to be called 'R souls'.
>   I need to process data in R which consist of strings like
>    
>   AAABAVVABNN
>   ABVVNNAA
>    
>   What I would like to know is whether there are commands that deliver
>   -the length of a string
>   -one specified character of a string (e.g. the 3rd letter)
>   -that allow to concatenate characters to a string again
  > s1="AAABAVVABNN"
  > s2='ABVVNNAA'

  > nchar(s1)
  [1] 11

  > substr(s1,6,6)
  [1] "V"

  > strsplit(s1,'')
[[1]]
  [1] "A" "A" "A" "B" "A"
"V" "V" "A" "B" "N"
"N"

  - returns a list.

  > chars = strsplit(s1,'')[[1]]
  > chars
   [1] "A" "A" "A" "B" "A"
"V" "V" "A" "B" "N"
"N"

  - back together again:

  > paste(chars,collapse='')
  [1] "AAABAVVABNN"