R help - Aug 2011 - gsub wildcard

Hello all,

I have what I think is a simple question but I've been unable to solve it. I
have the following string:

A[&states=1]:[&rate=2]425, B[&states=3]:[&rate=5]500

I would like to combine the two expressions in the [], so that only one set
of [] is present after each letter, so that I have the following string:

A:[&states=1,&rate=2]425, B:[&states=3,&rate=5]500

I tried this:
> Y <-
gsub("\\[&states=.\\]:\\[&",":\\[&states=.,", X)
which almost works, except that it replaces the numbers associated with
"states" with the period - not retaining the original value as I
thought the
wildcard character would.

Any help is most appreciated!

Thanks

Rebecca

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On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Rebecca Gray <atlasrrg at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I have what I think is a simple question but I've been unable to solve
it. I
> have the following string:
>
> A[&states=1]:[&rate=2]425, B[&states=3]:[&rate=5]500
>
> I would like to combine the two expressions in the [], so that only one set
> of [] is present after each letter, so that I have the following string:
>
> A:[&states=1,&rate=2]425, B:[&states=3,&rate=5]500
>
> I tried this:
>
>> Y <-
gsub("\\[&states=.\\]:\\[&",":\\[&states=.,", X)
>
> which almost works, except that it replaces the numbers associated with
> "states" with the period - not retaining the original value as I
thought the
> wildcard character would.
How about a simpler solution:

x = "A[&states=1]:[&rate=2]425,
B[&states=3]:[&rate=5]500"

gsub("]:[", ", ", x, fixed = TRUE)

i.e., simply replace ]:[ by ,

will that work?

Peter