.. and if you want to simultaneously handle possible multiple trailing zeros (not sure whether this could even happen)
(somewhat but not completely tested) > lambda <- c(0, 0.005, 0.01, 0.02, 0.04, 0.08) > gsub("^0(\\..*[^0])0*$","\\1",lambda) [1] "0" ".005" ".01" ".02" ".04" ".08" Note that the as.character() coercion is done automatically (and is documented to be). If you do much of this, it's worth going through one of the many web tutorials on regular expressions. And if you're a minimalist like me, you may even find R's man page, ?regexp), suffices. Cheers, Bert On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 9:09 AM, Sarah Goslee <sarah.gos...@gmail.com> wrote: > Here's one way to get rid of leading zeros before the > decimal point: > >> gsub("^0\\.", "\\.", as.character(lambda)) > [1] "0" ".005" ".01" ".02" ".04" ".08" > > Sarah > > On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Michael Friendly <frien...@yorku.ca> wrote: >> A simple question, but I can't find something to do what I want: >> >> Given: a vector of numbers, like >> >> lambda <- c(0, 0.005, 0.01, 0.02, 0.04, 0.08) >> >> Desired: format them in minimal space for use as plot labels, ie, without >> leading or tailing 0s. For this example: >> >> lambdaf <- c("0", .005", ".01", ".02", ".04", ".08") >> >> -- > > > -- > Sarah Goslee > http://www.functionaldiversity.org > > ______________________________________________ > 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. > -- 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 ______________________________________________ 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.