R help - Jun 2009 - Regular expression \ String Extraction help

Dear all,

Is there a good way of doing the following conversion:

[YYYY]-[MM]-[DD] [Time] [Day] [Name][Integer].[Extention]

to become

C:\test\[Name]\[YYYY]-[MM]-[DD] [Time] [Day]\[YYYY]-[MM]-[DD] [Time]
[Day] [Name][Integer].[Extention]

i.e. these

2009-04-10 1400 Fri Foo1.txt
2009-04-10 1400 Fri Universities2.txt
2009-04-10 1400 Fri Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy42.txt

will become

C:\test\Foo\2009-04-10 1400 Fri Foo1.txt
C:\test\Universities\2009-04-10 1400 Fri Universities2.txt
C:\test\Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy\2009-04-10 1400 Fri
Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy42.txt

My main issue is the conversion for 'Hitchkikers Guide To The
Galaxy54' because of the spaces in the Name. So far this is what i
have:
> txt <- '2009-04-10 1400 Fri Universities1.txt'
> step1 <- unlist(strsplit(txt, '\\.'))
> step2 <- unlist(strsplit(step1[1], ' '))
> Name <- gsub('[0-9]',replacement='', step2[4])
> step3 <- paste(step2[1], step2[2], step2[3], sep=' ')
> paste('C:\\test\\', Name, '\\', step3, '\\', txt,
sep='' )
[1] "C:\\test\\Universities\\2009-04-10 1400 Fri\\2009-04-10 1400 Fri
Universities1.txt"

Cheers,
Tony Breyal

On 03-Jun-09 11:34:16, Tony Breyal wrote:
> Dear all,
> Is there a good way of doing the following conversion:
> 
> [YYYY]-[MM]-[DD] [Time] [Day] [Name][Integer].[Extention]
> 
> to become
> 
> C:\test\[Name]\[YYYY]-[MM]-[DD] [Time] [Day]\[YYYY]-[MM]-[DD] [Time]
> [Day] [Name][Integer].[Extention]
> 
> i.e. these
> 
> 2009-04-10 1400 Fri Foo1.txt
> 2009-04-10 1400 Fri Universities2.txt
> 2009-04-10 1400 Fri Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy42.txt
> 
> will become
> 
> C:\test\Foo\2009-04-10 1400 Fri Foo1.txt
> C:\test\Universities\2009-04-10 1400 Fri Universities2.txt
> C:\test\Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy\2009-04-10 1400 Fri
> Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy42.txt
> 
> My main issue is the conversion for 'Hitchkikers Guide To The
> Galaxy54' because of the spaces in the Name. So far this is what i
> have:
> 
>> txt <- '2009-04-10 1400 Fri Universities1.txt'
>> step1 <- unlist(strsplit(txt, '\\.'))
>> step2 <- unlist(strsplit(step1[1], ' '))
>> Name <- gsub('[0-9]',replacement='', step2[4])
>> step3 <- paste(step2[1], step2[2], step2[3], sep=' ')
>> paste('C:\\test\\', Name, '\\', step3, '\\',
txt, sep='' )
> [1] "C:\\test\\Universities\\2009-04-10 1400 Fri\\2009-04-10 1400 Fri
> Universities1.txt"
> 
> Cheers,
> Tony Breyal
I can get as far as the following (using the "Hitchhikers" one):

   txt <- '2009-04-10 1400 Fri Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy42.txt'
   step1 <- unlist(strsplit(txt, '\\.'))
   step2 <- unlist(strsplit(step1[1], ' '))
   step2
   # [1] "Hitchhikers" "Guide" "To"
"The" "Galaxy42"

What is now needed is to join all the separate elements of step2
into a single character string. paste() won't do it, because it
produces a separate character string for each element of step2.
cat() won't do it because it has no value (so cannot be assigned).

You could loop over step2:

   Name1 <- step2[4]
   for(i in (5:length(step2))) Name1 <- paste(Name1,step2[i])
   Name1
   # [1] "Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy42"

Then do your gsub:

   Name <- gsub('[0-9]',replacement='', Name1)
   step3 <- paste(step2[1], step2[2], step2[3], sep=' ')
   paste('C:\\test\\', Name, '\\', step3, '\\', txt,
sep='' )

[1] "C:\\test\\Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy\\2009-04-10 1400
Fri\\2009-04-10 1400 Fri Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy42.txt"

So that works; but it would be nice to be able to avoid the loop!

Ted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 03-Jun-09                                       Time: 14:55:28
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

With

txt <- c("2009-04-10 1400 Fri Foo1.txt", "2009-04-10 1400 Fri
Universities2.txt",
"2009-04-10 1400 Fri Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy42.txt")

# Try this line:
> sub("(.*) ([^0-9]+)([0-9]+).txt", "C:\\\\test\\\\\\2\\\\\\1
\\2\\3.txt", txt)
[1] "C:\\test\\Foo\\2009-04-10 1400 Fri Foo1.txt"
[2] "C:\\test\\Universities\\2009-04-10 1400 Fri Universities2.txt"
[3] "C:\\test\\Galaxy\\2009-04-10 1400 Fri Hitchhikers Guide To The
Galaxy42.txt"


On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 7:34 AM, Tony Breyal <tony.breyal at
googlemail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Is there a good way of doing the following conversion:
>
> [YYYY]-[MM]-[DD] [Time] [Day] [Name][Integer].[Extention]
>
> to become
>
> C:\test\[Name]\[YYYY]-[MM]-[DD] [Time] [Day]\[YYYY]-[MM]-[DD] [Time]
> [Day] [Name][Integer].[Extention]
>
> i.e. these
>
> 2009-04-10 1400 Fri Foo1.txt
> 2009-04-10 1400 Fri Universities2.txt
> 2009-04-10 1400 Fri Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy42.txt
>
> will become
>
> C:\test\Foo\2009-04-10 1400 Fri Foo1.txt
> C:\test\Universities\2009-04-10 1400 Fri Universities2.txt
> C:\test\Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy\2009-04-10 1400 Fri
> Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy42.txt
>
> My main issue is the conversion for 'Hitchkikers Guide To The
> Galaxy54' because of the spaces in the Name. So far this is what i
> have:
>
>> txt <- '2009-04-10 1400 Fri Universities1.txt'
>> step1 <- unlist(strsplit(txt, '\\.'))
>> step2 <- unlist(strsplit(step1[1], ' '))
>> Name <- gsub('[0-9]',replacement='', step2[4])
>> step3 <- paste(step2[1], step2[2], step2[3], sep=' ')
>> paste('C:\\test\\', Name, '\\', step3, '\\',
txt, sep='' )
> [1] "C:\\test\\Universities\\2009-04-10 1400 Fri\\2009-04-10 1400 Fri
> Universities1.txt"
>
> Cheers,
> Tony Breyal
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>