R help - Jul 2010 - Trimming in R

I am looking for a way to trim leading and trailing spaces in a character 
string in R. For example:

"       this is random text        "

should become:

"this is random text".

I have a short function to perform this task as follows:

trim <- function(str){
       str <- sub("^ +", "", str)
       str <- sub(" +$", "", str)
}

While this function does seem to work, I am curious if there's anything
built
into R that I can use instead, as that would be preferable.

Thanks in advance,
Andrew


      
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Try this:

gsub("^\\s+|\\s+$", "", "       this is random text    
")

On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Andrew Leeser
<aml05williams@yahoo.com>wrote:
> I am looking for a way to trim leading and trailing spaces in a character
> string in R. For example:
>
> "       this is random text        "
>
> should become:
>
> "this is random text".
>
> I have a short function to perform this task as follows:
>
> trim <- function(str){
>        str <- sub("^ +", "", str)
>        str <- sub(" +$", "", str)
> }
>
> While this function does seem to work, I am curious if there's anything
> built
> into R that I can use instead, as that would be preferable.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Andrew
>
>
>
>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@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-Paraná-Brasil
25° 25' 40" S 49° 16' 22" O

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On Jul 7, 2010, at 9:23 AM, Andrew Leeser wrote:
> I am looking for a way to trim leading and trailing spaces in a  
> character
> string in R. For example:
>
> "       this is random text        "
>
> should become:
>
> "this is random text".
>
> I have a short function to perform this task as follows:
>
> trim <- function(str){
>        str <- sub("^ +", "", str)
>        str <- sub(" +$", "", str)
> }
>
> While this function does seem to work, I am curious if there's  
> anything built
> into R that I can use instead, as that would be preferable.
I have been using the trim function in package gdata. The code is  
quite similar to yours.

-- 

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT