Hi, Try this: ex<-"cbind(data$response1,data$response2)" gsub(".*\\(.*\\$(.*)\\,.*\\$.*\\)","\\1",ex) #[1] "response1"
unlist(strsplit(gsub(".*\\(.*\\$(.*)\\,.*\\$(.*)\\)","\\1 \\2",ex)," ")) #[1] "response1" "response2" A.K. ----- Original Message ----- From: Özgür Asar <oa...@metu.edu.tr> To: r-help@r-project.org Cc: Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2012 12:26 PM Subject: Re: [R] two questions about character manipulation Dear Rui Barradas and Michael Weylandt, Many thanks for your replies. My second question is solved now. But I think I did not expressed my first wish in a clear way Indeed, in ex<-"cbind(data$response1,data$response2), I want to extract the variable name between "$" and "," (corresponds to response1 in this example) and the one between "$" and ")" (corresponds to response2). These symbols ("$", ",", ")" ) are always same, but the names (response1, response2) might change from data to data. Best Ozgur -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/two-questions-about-character-manipulation-tp4643292p4643301.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ 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.