R help - Oct 2009 - replacing period with a space

Dear R-ers!

I have x as a variable in a data frame x.

x<-data.frame(x=c("aa.bb","cc.dd.ee"))
x$x<-as.character(x$x)
x

I am sorry for such a simple question - but how can I replace all
periods in x$x with spaces?

sub('.', ' ', x$x) - removes all letters to the left of each
period...

Thanks a lot for your advice!

-- 
Dimitri Liakhovitski
Ninah.com
Dimitri.Liakhovitski at ninah.com

You need escape the period:

gsub("\\.", " ", x$x)

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Dimitri Liakhovitski <ld7631 at
gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear R-ers!
>
> I have x as a variable in a data frame x.
>
> x<-data.frame(x=c("aa.bb","cc.dd.ee"))
> x$x<-as.character(x$x)
> x
>
> I am sorry for such a simple question - but how can I replace all
> periods in x$x with spaces?
>
> sub('.', ' ', x$x) - removes all letters to the left of
each period...
>
> Thanks a lot for your advice!
>
> --
> Dimitri Liakhovitski
> Ninah.com
> Dimitri.Liakhovitski at ninah.com
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>


-- 
Henrique Dallazuanna
Curitiba-Paran?-Brasil
25? 25' 40" S 49? 16' 22" O

As you've discovered, the . means something special in regular
expressions (and R's version of them). You need to escape it with \\:
> x<-data.frame(x=c("aa.bb","cc.dd.ee"))
> x$x<-as.character(x$x)
> x
         x
1    aa.bb
2 cc.dd.ee
> sub("\\.", " ", x$x)
[1] "aa bb"    "cc dd.ee"
> gsub("\\.", " ", x$x)
[1] "aa bb"    "cc dd ee"

And to change all, you need gsub() rather than sub().

Sarah

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Dimitri Liakhovitski <ld7631 at
gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear R-ers!
>
> I have x as a variable in a data frame x.
>
> x<-data.frame(x=c("aa.bb","cc.dd.ee"))
> x$x<-as.character(x$x)
> x
>
> I am sorry for such a simple question - but how can I replace all
> periods in x$x with spaces?
>
> sub('.', ' ', x$x) - removes all letters to the left of
each period...
>
> Thanks a lot for your advice!
>


-- 
Sarah Goslee
http://www.functionaldiversity.org

Here is one more that works:
gsub("."," ","Start.Time", fixed = TRUE)

"fixed = TRUE" really helps in a lot of instances for removing
specific characters without accidently angering the regular expression gods.

Enjoy. 



--- On Tue, 10/13/09, Dimitri Liakhovitski <ld7631 at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Dimitri Liakhovitski <ld7631 at gmail.com>
> Subject: [R] replacing period with a space
> To: "R-Help List" <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
> Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2009, 12:26 PM
> Dear R-ers!
> 
> I have x as a variable in a data frame x.
> 
> x<-data.frame(x=c("aa.bb","cc.dd.ee"))
> x$x<-as.character(x$x)
> x
> 
> I am sorry for such a simple question - but how can I
> replace all
> periods in x$x with spaces?
> 
> sub('.', ' ', x$x) - removes all letters to the left of
> each period...
> 
> Thanks a lot for your advice!
> 
> -- 
> Dimitri Liakhovitski
> Ninah.com
> Dimitri.Liakhovitski at ninah.com
> 
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>

Try chartr:
> chartr(".", " ", "a.b.c")
[1] "a b c"

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Dimitri Liakhovitski <ld7631 at
gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear R-ers!
>
> I have x as a variable in a data frame x.
>
> x<-data.frame(x=c("aa.bb","cc.dd.ee"))
> x$x<-as.character(x$x)
> x
>
> I am sorry for such a simple question - but how can I replace all
> periods in x$x with spaces?
>
> sub('.', ' ', x$x) - removes all letters to the left of
each period...
>
> Thanks a lot for your advice!
>
> --
> Dimitri Liakhovitski
> Ninah.com
> Dimitri.Liakhovitski at ninah.com
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>