R help - Sep 2010 - Transforming character vector

Hi guys, 
  Cant seem to find a solution for this.  I am looking for a substitute for
cut that can transform character vectors.  So as cut would be used below to
transform YearCat-> YearCat2 base on Year and vector
Ag<-c("00-'70","'71-'75","'76-'85","'86-'09")
using 'cut '
FleetData$YearCat<-cut(FleetData$Year,c(0,1970,1975,1985,2009),labels=Ag)

      Make	       Year	    YearCat	YearCat2
1	DODG	2003	'86-'09	(2002,2003]
3	FORD	1995	'86-'09	(1994,1995]
5	JEP	1997	'86-'09	(1996,1997]
6	JEP	1997	'86-'09	(1996,1997]
7	DODG	2002	'86-'09	(2001,2002]
8	BMW	1997	'86-'09	(1996,1997]
11	TOYT	2006	'86-'09	(2005,2006]
12	CHEV	1997	'86-'09	(1996,1997]
13	CHEV	1992	'86-'09	(1991,1992]
14	CHEV	1996	'86-'09	(1995,1996]

I need to do the same for a fueltype where each record has a character
representing the data instead of a numeral(as in year).  No reproducible
code or data because i think this is pretty straight forward.  I could do
this using a series of loops but i think there is prob a more elegant way. 
Use of grep?  Thanks for the help

JR

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LCOG1 <jroll <at> lcog.org> writes:

[snip]
> 
> I need to do the same for a fueltype where each record has a character
> representing the data instead of a numeral(as in year).  No reproducible
> code or data because i think this is pretty straight forward.  I could do
> this using a series of loops but i think there is prob a more elegant way. 
> Use of grep?  Thanks for the help
Reproducible would still help because we still have to do a bit of guessing
about what you mean.  How do you want to define the ordering on characters?
If the number of fuel types is small enough, you could just create a factor
and cut() on the numeric values , e.g.

fueltype <-
factor(c("A","A","B","E","Q"),levels=LETTERS)
cut(as.numeric(fueltype),c(-0.5,13.5,26.5),labels=c("A-M","N-Z"))