on 10/29/2008 03:57 PM Erin Hodgess wrote: > Dear R People: > > Here is a toy example: > >> x <- c("2E","5W","12H") >> substr(x,2,2) > [1] "E" "W" "2" > > Sometimes x has 3 elements, sometimes 2. I want to extract the last > element, and then extract the other 1 or 2 elements. > > How can I do this, please? > > TIA, > Sincerely, > Erin
Hi Erin, Is this what you want? # Get the last character > gsub(".*(.)$", "\\1", x) [1] "E" "W" "H" # Get the others > gsub("(^.*).$", "\\1", x) [1] "2" "5" "12" See ?gsub HTH, Marc Schwartz ______________________________________________ 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.