Conversion of strings to numbers - r

Question

Hello I'm looking for a way to turn user inputted strings into matrices for example: 28 = SPACE, 27 = ?, 26 = 0, 25 = A, 24=B 23=C 22=D 21=E 20=F 19=G 18=H
17=I 16=J 15=K 14=L 13=M 12=N 11=O 10=P 9=Q 8=R 7=S 6=T 5=U 4=V 3=W 2=X 1=Y 0=Z
"HI HOW ARE YOU?" -> "[18 17 28 18 11][3 28 25 8 21][28 1 11 5 27]"
wherein each letter/symbol of the string is converted to a numerical value (special attention to spacebar I really don't know how to turn space into numbers). I'll be using these matrices to make a cryptograph

Answer 1

You could use utf8ToInt
x <- "HI HOW ARE YOU?"
We need pmin to get your condition 28 = SPACE right.
pmin(abs(utf8ToInt("HI HOW ARE YOU?") - utf8ToInt("Z")), 28)
# [1] 18 17 28 18 11 3 28 25 8 21 28 1 11 5 27
From ?utf8ToInt :
Conversion of UTF-8 encoded character vectors to and from integer vectors representing a UTF-32 encoding.
First step is
utf8ToInt("HI HOW ARE YOU?")
[1] 72 73 32 72 79 87 32 65 82 69 32 89 79 85 63
from which we substract utf8ToInt("Z"), i.e. 90 because you wrote 0=Z.
Call abs on the result to get positive numbers.
abs(utf8ToInt("HI HOW ARE YOU?") - utf8ToInt("Z"))
# [1] 18 17 58 18 11 3 58 25 8 21 58 1 11 5 27
The last piece is your condition 28 = SPACE, which is where pmin helps you out.