R help - Feb 2013 - Dealing with parentheses within variable names

Dear all

I'm having some problems with a data set that has parenthesis within the
variable names. A example of this kind of variable names is the following:

				fBodyGyroskewness()Z

The case is that R is having a lot of troubles to identify the variable
(probably it does understand it like a function). I've tried (among other
things) to remove the parenthesis from the name using the following command:

				names(dataFrame) <- sub("()","", names(dataFrame))

but It didn't work.  Sorry if it's a silly issue but I would really
appreciate if anybody could help me. Thank you very much.
	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Please read ?regex, where it says:

" Any metacharacter with special meaning may be quoted by preceding it
with a backslash. The metacharacters in EREs are . \ | ( ) [ { ^ $ * +
?, but note that whether these have a special meaning depends on the
context. "

So use:
sub("\(\)","", names(dataFrame))

instead.

-- Bert


On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 8:08 AM, Jesus Munoz Serrano
<jesusmunozserrano at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all
>
> I'm having some problems with a data set that has parenthesis within
the variable names. A example of this kind of variable names is the following:
>
>                                 fBodyGyroskewness()Z
>
> The case is that R is having a lot of troubles to identify the variable
(probably it does understand it like a function). I've tried (among other
things) to remove the parenthesis from the name using the following command:
>
>                                 names(dataFrame) <-
sub("()","", names(dataFrame))
>
> but It didn't work.  Sorry if it's a silly issue but I would really
appreciate if anybody could help me. Thank you very much.
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.


-- 

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics

Internal Contact Info:
Phone: 467-7374
Website:
http://pharmadevelopment.roche.com/index/pdb/pdb-functional-groups/pdb-biostatistics/pdb-ncb-home.htm

On 28/02/2013 11:08 AM, Jesus Munoz Serrano wrote:
> Dear all
>
> I'm having some problems with a data set that has parenthesis within
the variable names. A example of this kind of variable names is the following:
>
> 				fBodyGyroskewness()Z
>
> The case is that R is having a lot of troubles to identify the variable
(probably it does understand it like a function). I've tried (among other
things) to remove the parenthesis from the name using the following command:
>
> 				names(dataFrame) <- sub("()","",
names(dataFrame))
>
> but It didn't work.  Sorry if it's a silly issue but I would really
appreciate if anybody could help me. Thank you very much.
R shouldn't have trouble with names like that, but a lot of packages 
will (e.g. the ones that construct strings and call parse() on them).  
If you find functions in base R that object to those names, I think we'd 
like to fix them.  If the functions are in contributed packages, your 
mileage may vary.

Duncan Murdoch

Try

sub("[(]","", names(dataFrams)

and

sub("[)]","", names(dataFrams)

Frans




2013/2/28 Jesus Munoz Serrano <jesusmunozserrano at
gmail.com>
>
> Dear all
>
> I'm having some problems with a data set that has parenthesis within
the variable names. A example of this kind of variable names is the following:
>
>                                 fBodyGyroskewness()Z
>
> The case is that R is having a lot of troubles to identify the variable
(probably it does understand it like a function). I've tried (among other
things) to remove the parenthesis from the name using the following command:
>
>                                 names(dataFrame) <-
sub("()","", names(dataFrame))
>
> but It didn't work.  Sorry if it's a silly issue but I would really
appreciate if anybody could help me. Thank you very much.
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.