The strsplit function is probably the closest R function to perls split function. For more detailed control the gsubfn package can be useful.
-----Original Message----- From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-help-boun...@r-project.org] On Behalf Of Gamliel Beyderman Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 3:35 PM To: r-help@r-project.org Subject: [R] reading a column as a character vector Hi! I have 2 columns (even though the data looks like there's more columns than just two) of data in the following format: 0,"58905313R0EOL" "229742002R0EOL" "58905312R0EOL" 1,"58905317R0DBL" "58905303R0DBL" "58905313R0IL" "58905313R0VH" "58905313R0EOL" "223354003R0IL" "223354003R0VH" "58905308R0DBL" "58905308R0VM" "58905301R0DBL" "229742002R0IL" "229742002R0VH" "229742002R0EOL" I can change the format of the input (remove quotes, add spaces, only put quotes around the entire list of codes...) The first column is numeric, the second column is a character vector of event codes. Ultimately, I want to to transform the second column into a factor where each event code (such as 58905313R0EOL or 216918000R0DBL) is a separate level. while the following statement works: reduce2<-read.table("reduce2.csv", sep=",", colClasses=c("integer","factor")) it does not know to break the event vectors into separate levels, the factor it creates is wrong. Perhaps there's something in R similar to split in Perl... Thanks! [[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. ______________________________________________ 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.