Hi, You could try this: dat1<-read.table(text=pub,sep=",",fill=TRUE,stringsAsFactors=F) dat2<- as.data.frame(do.call(cbind,lapply(dat1,function(x) gsub(" $","",gsub("^ |\\w+$","",x)))),stringsAsFactors=F)
dat2 # V1 V2 V3 V4 #1 Brown Santos Rome Don Juan #2 Benigni #3 Arstra Van den Hoops lamarque A.K. ----- Original Message ----- From: Biau David <djmb...@yahoo.fr> To: r help list <r-help@r-project.org> Cc: Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 12:38 PM Subject: [R] extracting characters from a string Dear All, I have a data frame of vectors of publication names such as 'pub': pub1 <- c('Brown DK, Santos R, Rome DF, Don Juan X') pub2 <- c('Benigni D') pub3 <- c('Arstra SD, Van den Hoops DD, lamarque D') pub <- rbind(pub1, pub2, pub3) I would like to construct a dataframe with only author's last name and each last name in columns and the publication in rows. Basically I want to get rid of the initials (max 2, always before a comma) and spaces surounding last name. I would like to avoid a loop. ps: If I could have even a short explanation of the code that extract the values of the character string that would also be great! David [[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.