HI,
tempdf<-read.table(text=" name,var1,var2,abb Tom Cruiser,1,6,TomCru Bread Pett,2,5,BrePet Arnold Schwiezer,3,7,ArnSch ",sep=",",header=TRUE,stringsAsFactors=FALSE) substr(tempdf$name, 4, 6) #as some of the firstnames differ in the number of characters #[1] " Cr" "ad " "old" substr(gsub(".*\\s+","",tempdf$name),1,3) #[1] "Cru" "Pet" "Sch" A.K. ----- Original Message ----- From: Jorge I Velez <jorgeivanve...@gmail.com> To: SH <empti...@gmail.com> Cc: r-help@r-project.org Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 10:10 AM Subject: Re: [R] Extract letters from a column Dear SH, Hmmm... what about substr(tempdf$name, 4, 6)) ? HTH, Jorge.- On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 1:06 AM, SH <empti...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear list: > > I would like to extract three letters from first and second elements > in one column and make a new column. > > For example below, > > > tempdf = read.table("clipboard", header=T, sep='\t') > > tempdf > name var1 var2 abb > 1 Tom Cruiser 1 6 TomCru > 2 Bread Pett 2 5 BrePet > 3 Arnold Schwiezer 3 7 ArnSch > > (p1 = substr(tempdf$name, 1, 3)) > [1] "Tom" "Bre" "Arn" > > I was able to extract three letters from first name, however, I don't > know how to extract three letters from last name (i.e., 'Cru', 'Pet', > and 'Sch'). Can anyone give me a suggestion? Many thanks in advance. > > Best, > > Steve > > ______________________________________________ > 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. > [[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.